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A review by asiakota
L'Élégance du hérisson by Muriel Barbery
1.0
Just like touching a hedgehog, it hurts to read this book. It is overflowing with pretentiousness to the point where I would skip entire pages when a philosophical rant would come up. I like philosophy and I like when a book adds philosophical elements to make me think about life and what I'm reading, but this was too much. Generally, the philosophical rants held no importance to the plot and it just screamed of "Oh I also know a lot about this so let me show off how much I know!"
Now, let's say you skip all of the philosophy: is the plot worth it? The main character is an extremely intelligent woman but has to pretend that she is stupid because she works as a concierge in a fancy building. God forbid someone finds out her secret... then what? Well, logically, probably not much because there's no reason for anyone to care. This story takes place in the present day, where schooling is free in France so if she really wanted, she could go back to school-- but that's besides the point. The whole premise of the story is that her world will end if people find out how intelligent she is and if they see her reading Kafka or whoever else. A normal person, even an uppity rich person, is too self-absorbed to care even in this ultra-posh place. Even if they did find out...this doesn't take place at a time when women couldn't read, so this entire premise makes zero sense.
Then we have the little girl who is going to commit suicide because she's too intelligent. This would have been interesting had the character shown any symptoms of depression and shown a deeper side to her story, but no she is just too smart to be alive. So here we have two unlikeable protagonists whose entire plot revolves around two non-issues fluffed up with useless philosophical pretentiousness.
All in all, maybe if you love philosophy then you can power through 50% of the book and mildly enjoy it but then you have to deal with the useless plot line. I probably would only recommend this book to that annoying person who always has to add a useless, unrelated fun-fact to any conversation-- they might relate to this book.
Now, let's say you skip all of the philosophy: is the plot worth it? The main character is an extremely intelligent woman but has to pretend that she is stupid because she works as a concierge in a fancy building. God forbid someone finds out her secret... then what? Well, logically, probably not much because there's no reason for anyone to care. This story takes place in the present day, where schooling is free in France so if she really wanted, she could go back to school-- but that's besides the point. The whole premise of the story is that her world will end if people find out how intelligent she is and if they see her reading Kafka or whoever else. A normal person, even an uppity rich person, is too self-absorbed to care even in this ultra-posh place. Even if they did find out...this doesn't take place at a time when women couldn't read, so this entire premise makes zero sense.
Then we have the little girl who is going to commit suicide because she's too intelligent. This would have been interesting had the character shown any symptoms of depression and shown a deeper side to her story, but no she is just too smart to be alive. So here we have two unlikeable protagonists whose entire plot revolves around two non-issues fluffed up with useless philosophical pretentiousness.
All in all, maybe if you love philosophy then you can power through 50% of the book and mildly enjoy it but then you have to deal with the useless plot line. I probably would only recommend this book to that annoying person who always has to add a useless, unrelated fun-fact to any conversation-- they might relate to this book.