be a willing reader…

Book review:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery

Alison Anderson, trans.

New York: Europa Editions, 2006

325 pages

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a logophile’s book.

Really.

If you can read this book without keeping your dictionary close at hand, I want to shake your hand.

Barbery has written a stunning first-person interaction of two characters who could easily be separate books. (Distinguishing fonts makes it easy to know who’s talking.)

The Hedgehog is Renée Michel, an almost unflappable and serenely superior person who pretends to be a simple old concierge in a building almost filled with rich folks who don’t care what she thinks about. She thinks about plenty that would never occur to them.

The second primary persona is Paloma, a barely-out-of-her-tweens girl who thinks she wants to commit suicide but lives an overwhelmingly fantastic life in her head and becomes Renée’s friend.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a literate, penetrating, philosophical, compassionate revelation of two great minds who connect and spiral into ever more fancies for the willing reader’s delight.

Be a willing reader.

* * * * * *

Book review: The Girl at the Lion d’Or

Sebastian Faulks is tenaciously literate,

richly Gallic…

click here

In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”