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The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The story flits between the confessions of two women: Renée Michel, a 54-year-old concierge in a Parisian block of luxury apartments, and Paloma Josse, a precocious 12-year-old girl, the daughter of one of the most bourgeois families in the house. Paloma has decided that life is meaningless and is making plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday.
The reader knows from the beginning that the two of them have more in common than they realise. But Renée must maintain her lowly position in the pecking order so that she can keep her job: she is an autodidact who adores Tolstoy, is a devotee of Japanese cinema and listens to Mahler. The inhabitants of 7 Rue de Grenelle would, apparently, be scandalised if they found out that their lonely, dowdy concierge was getting up to all these intellectual high jinks.
Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery | Books | The Observer.
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