Elegant Hedgehogs

Well, in my initial statements for this blog, I talk about how you can attend book club vicariously through me. I think I rashly mentioned something like "I read the book, I attend the book club..." I'm here to tell you I've let you down. I didn't finish the book. I didn't even finish half of the book. I got about one third of the way through. And it won't be the last time.

It was not even my desire to fulfill the rest of my commitment to my blog readers that goaded me to attend the meeting anyway. It was the presence of my children. With one coming home from summer camp this morning, and two headed out to summer camp tomorrow, things are in an uproar around here, and book club was my escape from the rabble. My husband, Brian, cast a sorrowful look my way as I headed to the garage.

The Neland Womens' Book Club gathered tonight to talk about The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. My failure to meet the reading deadline has nothing to do with a lack of interest in the book. This book has been a worldwide bestseller. It was originally published in France (in French, of all things), and, according to our diligent leader-of-the-night, Rita, it has been translated into 35 languages. Apparently it sold 1.2 million hardcovers in France alone!

I think it goes without saying, but the following thoughts and insights are hardly mine! These are things plucked from the group discussion.

A friend of mine sums this book up as a beach read for philosophers. If philosophers ever went to the beach, this is what they'd read there. I don't know the beachgoing tendencies of philosophers, but I can say that this book covers its share of philosophy. Tonight's leader, Rita, who has spent a lot of time living in France, said that the philosophical nature of the book is part of its appeal for the French readership--philosophy is still compulsory in high school there, and it is part of the general conversational atmosphere.

France is also a country that has a strong sense of classes, and this novel about people learning to step across barriers is intriguing. One of our members had recently heard a lecture by a professor here, Dr. James Bratt, who said that classism is going to become an overriding issue for the U.S. in coming decades. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. The gap between them will become a bigger barrier to cross. Even in the U.S. (land of opportunity and all that) it takes an extraordinary child to break out of the expected, no matter their class. Paloma, the young girl in the book, writes "But if, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears?"

The book is told from two perspectives--a 50-something concierge of an apartment building, and a 12-year-old girl who resides there as well. This book got very positive reactions from many of the readers at the meeting, and one woman said she went back and read each narrative separately to get a different view of the story. It is hard to imagine a 12-year-old with this sort of insight into the world and the people around her, but most were able to get past that aspect of the story.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is not a light read--part of the reason I have not finished it is that I have tried to read it while sitting at the neighborhood pool, and I've been too distracted there to dive into the story, if you'll pardon the pun. Reading time at home in the quiet living room has been much more successful.

The novel reflects on art and beauty, and what meaning those things add to our lives. It also shows the way that people hide part or all of themselves from the world. (I can't help hearing the lyrics to "The Stranger" by Billy Joel over and over in my mind.) When we are quick to categorize without looking at people more deeply, we miss the chance to really know them. And all of us have a longing to be known for who we really are.

Rita was able to give us more insight into the French context of the novel. In the past, starting in the 18th century, almost every apartment building in France came to have a concierge. The concierge sweeps the hall, polishes the doorknobs, takes the garbage bins to the street for pickup, and numerous other tasks, sometimes even keeping noisy residents under control.

Over the last decade, 10,000 buildings have given up their concierges. Cleaning crews from businesses sweep through many buildings a day for a lower cost than maintaining a concierge position. Many mourn the loss of this tradition and are campaigning to keep the positions. They are the only human connection that some residents have, especially elderly people who depend on them. Personally, I would very much appreciate a concierge in my home.

Also, there is one scene in the book that was more understandable (and more humorous) when Rita explained that France controls the "sales" that retail stores can offer. Sales can only occur in January or July, so everyone goes in to try to get a deal.

Beyond the specifics of trying to better understand a novel written in another country and language, there are universals here that make the book successful in so many places. As I mentioned, art and beauty and the desire to know and to be known are strong themes. The last page has some lovely words. "...Maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that's it, an always within never." Isn't that what we are all searching for in some way, an always within the never?