Book Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

How quickly do we form our impressions of others? How dependent are those impressions on the way someone appears? What determines whether or not we simply interact with another person, or truly form a connection with them? It is when Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog explores these deeply human questions that the novel is wonderfully successful.

Madame Renée Michel works as a concierge for an upscale condominium in one of Paris’ most elegant neighborhoods, and occupies a small apartment in the building. The building’s other residents include the upper crust of French society: food critics, members of Parliament, government ministers. To the building residents, the widowed Madame Michel appears in every way a model concierge: aging, ugly, unfashionable, and a bit dim. But in reality, Madame Michel is an autodidact, voraciously reading everything she can get her hands on. She spends her time off seeking out great books and great art. But she conceals her erudite nature from the resident of 7, rue de Grenelle, believing that her job is safer if the elites she works for believe she is not trying to reach beyond her social class.

But a few people in the building see through Madame Michel’s ruse. Portuguese housemaid Manuela, Renée’s one true friend, knows that beneath her crusty exterior Renée is a person of great passion – even if she doesn’t guess the depths of her friend’s thirst for knowledge. The newest resident in the building, wealthy Japanese businessman Kakuro, recognizes a line from Tolstoy that Madame Michel carelessly inserts into a conversation. And Paloma, the all-seeing 12-year-old daughter of high-minded French socialists who make time for every cause save their family, notices the intelligence in Madame Michel’s eyes, and senses a kindred spirit. Madame Michel’s interactions with these individuals, and the lessons we can draw from them, are truly surprising and inspiring. It is significant that all of Madame Michel’s friends come from outside of French culture, including Paloma, the only French member of the bunch, who does her best to place herself outside of what she sees as a hypocritical order. This is, no doubt, a part of Barbery’s treatise on the French social system, which makes up a significant portion of the book.

And that, unfortunately, is where the book fell down for me. Barbery was trained as a philosopher, and a great deal of the book comprises essays on the nature of being, moving and knowing, as experienced by the characters of Madame Michel and Paloma Josse. Some of these pieces are quite interesting, such as her discussion of Dutch still lives. But in other parts of the book she opines on topics like phenomenology and aesthetics for chapters at a time, without drawing any interesting conclusions. As with Alexander McCall Smith’s Sunday Afternoon Philosophy Club series, at those times I had the distinct feeling I was being schooled, rather than entertained. Also, I’m no expert in French sociology, nor am I a Marxist scholar, but I am pretty sure there are worse examples of classism on the planet than modern day France – even if there is a lingering elitism that the fifth Republic has yet to address.

Still, there is so much to like about this book. There are some laughs and some extraordinarily tender moments. I will probably never look at a camellia the same way again after reading this book, and that’s a powerful thing. I particularly loved the incident when Madame Michel and Monsieur Ozu are leaving for dinner, and the wealthy ladies of the building have no idea that the woman on their new friend’s arm is their concierge: they simply don’t see it, because in their world it simply can’t happen. Barbery captured the moment perfectly.

I hated the ending of the novel – no quibbling about that – but it didn’t ruin the book for me. (It did cross my mind after reading it that I wouldn’t enjoy having dinner with the author, but that was just an idle thought, and not an issue I’m likely to face any time soon. However, it should signal how very much I thought the ending was somehow mean-spirited). Lovers of literary fiction, translated fiction and philosophy should definitely have this book on their TBR lists – although I imagine many of them have read it already, considering the extraordinary success of the novel around the world.

This is my third book for the Europa Challenge 2011. My last review, of Amara Lakhous’ Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio will appear on the Europa Editions Challenge site this week – but I’ll hold off posting it here on Col Reads until my buddy Jess at Desperado Penguin is ready with her review. I am already looking forward to the 2012 Europa Editions Challenge. Thanks so much to Marie at The Boston Bibliophile for hosting!

Book Review: Alina Bronsky's The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

When I dislike the main character in a novel, I usually don’t like the novel. So how can I explain my fascination with Alina Bronsky’s The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine? Rosalinda represents all that is wrong with motherhood – she constructs her relationships with her daughter and later her granddaughter completely strategically, always thinking how she might benefit from their interactions. She’s seems almost completely unaware of how she is viewed by others. It’s totally over-the-top. Which is probably why she’s makes such a compelling unreliable narrator.

Rosalinda is inordinately proud of her Tartar heritage (which comes along with a host of folk medical remedies that are truly hilarious). She’s proud of her beauty and youthful appearance (especially her shapely legs, which she believes men swoon over). She’s proud of her family (or at least she believes she could be, if they’d simply do as she tells them). Her lack of self-awareness has benefits, as she walks around Russia and later Germany convinced of her own important place in the world, even if she’s cleaning someone else’s toilets – or rifling through someone else’s private papers.

Of course, her megalomania has disastrous effects on the people in her life, especially on her daughter Sulfia, who can never quite escape Rosalinda’s sphere of influence and therefore misses every chance at happiness with her own daughter, Aminat. Aminat herself watches Rosalinda with a keen eye, and the reader has the impression that she’s just waiting for her chance to act – she reminded me of a mouse eyeing a big, Persian cat, just waiting for the cat to lower it guard enough for the mouse to make its move.

What Bronksy gives the reader with The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is a true tragicomedy, which succeeds only because Rosalinda is so totally outrageous that it’s funny, in a thoroughly disturbing way. It reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide, but without the main character’s growing realization that perhaps everything wasn’t alright with the universe after all – despite tragedy after tragedy, Rosalinda remains convinced of her own omnipotence from start to finish. This book really worked for me, although I can appreciate that it might not work for everyone. With a good sense of gallows humor, I think the reader will enjoy the novel despite their feelings about the narrator, a pretty interesting feat for Bronsky to pull off, in my opinion.

I was planning on this being a weekend cooking post, but after reading the novel, it doesn’t seem right – the only thing foodie about the book was the title. But it still counts for the Europa Editions Challenge, and I’ll be cross posting this on the Challenge Blog. The semester ends on Friday, so I’m still hopeful I can finish up a couple of the challenges I have lingering before then. If only I had some little elves to do my grading for me, so I could just read my holiday break away!

Book Review and Simul-blog: James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking with Fernet Branca

Take a snarky British gourmand; mix with a bohemian composer of Eastern European extraction; add a self-important British pop star and an aging Italian movie director, each with delusions of grandeur; ply with a seemingly unending supply of an obscure liqueur; place on the top of an Italian mountain and watch what happens next! This recipe for disaster is the essence of James Hamilton-Paterson’s Cooking with Fernet Branca.

Cooking with Fernet Branca is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. So funny that I wound up with tears running down my face. So funny I gasped while trying to read passages aloud to explain said tears. Not to be maudlin or anything, but ever since Douglas Adams left this world far too young, I have honestly believed no novel could ever make me laugh that hard again. It was a delight to find out how very wrong I was.

Of course, the problem with humor is that it is so darn personal – why did Gerald Samper and his former-soviet nemesis Marta crack me up so? In my case, it all comes down to a subtle, sarcastic and deadpan writing style that only a few writers can deliver on. And almost all of them are British. At one point, Marta describes the take over of her home (and her neighbor’s yard) by an Italian film crew:

And all the time there came suggestive sounds from outside and glimpses through the window of poor Gerry’s fence being forcefully dealt with. There were some loud splintering noises which did not at all imply intactness. There were also some blasphemies new to me – the men were all-too-clearly native Tuscans – the gist being that the Madonna was unpopular for having yielded her virginity to a series of farmyard animals and the absent Gerry for having used a nail gun instead of an ordinary hammer. p. 182

James Hamilton-Paterson wrote Cooking with Fernet Branca with alternating narration between “Gerry” and Marta. Amazingly, both “voices” are hilarious, barreling along the path to what they believe can only be glory, Marta through her dissonant musicality and Gerald through his bizarre gustatory endeavors.

Hamilton-Paterson is obviously a great observer of contemporary culture, and he skewers a number of trends in this book – particularly fusion cooking. What else to make of recipes like Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream, Mussels in Chocolate and Otter with Lobster Sauce? But it’s Gerald Samper’s self-seriousness that takes it from ludicrous to comic genius. And that’s what makes James Hamilton-Paterson such a fabulous writer.

This was my first book for the Europa Challenge, but it is already making me rethink my list. I don’t know if I can wait to read Hamilton-Paterson’s follow-up titles, Amazing Disgrace and Rancid Pansies. This book is absolutely recommended for lovers of British humor – if The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is your idea of a great time, read this book!

I am simul-blogging today! Both Jess at Desperado Penguin and Colleen at Books in the City read this book with me, as part of the Europa Challenge. I can’t wait to see their take on Gerald and Marta.

Oops! Forgot to put this book into one sentence: Bitter liquor makes strange bedfellows.




Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Europa Challenge 2011: My Dinner with Europa

Looking at my original list of books for the Europa Challenge 2011, I realized I had a theme going. In fact, the titles read like a night having friends over to dinner– or maybe even a date night. I’ve included the descriptions from the Europa Catalog, in case you’re interested!

• Cooking with Fernet Branca (James Hamilton-Paterson): A delicious comedy of manners nominated for the 2004 MAN Booker Prize.
• The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (Alina Bronsky): Told with sly humor and an anthropologist’s eye for detail, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine is the story of three unforgettable women whose destinies are tangled up in a family dynamic that is at turns hilarious and tragic.
• The Proof of the Honey (Salwa Al Neimi): A bestseller throughout the Arab world, a tribute to sex, eroticism, language and liberty, The Proof of the Honey is a superb celebration of female pleasure.
• Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (Amara Lakhous): A shrewd mix of social satire and murder mystery.

I absolutely loved this idea, so I went through the catalog to see if I could find any other “courses” for my “dinner with Europa,” and I came up with these fantastic titles:

• The Woman with the Bouquet (Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt): An exceptional collection by one of Europe’s most beloved authors.
• Bone China (Roma Tearne): A beautifully crafted story of hope and survival set in Sri Lanka and England that will appeal to all readers of White Teeth and The Inheritance of Loss.
• The Goodbye Kiss (Massimo Carlotto): After years on the run, he's back and willing to do anything to claw his way into respectable society.

Of course, they looked so interesting that I now want to read them all. So while I’ve committed to being a Europa Ami (4 books), I think it’s possible I may wind up a Europa Haver (7 books) when it’s all said and done!

Feel free to join me for dinner with Europa -- everyone's invited!