“Beauty is truth”

The absurdly, and therefore aptly, named The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a meandering quest for beauty as only the French could do it. Driven by the poetic ruminations of a concierge in disguise and a twelve-year-old intellectual, the novel ranks as the very thing it explores – Art.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Publisher: Europa Editions / ISBN: 9781933372600 / Price: R230.00

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty," an English poet named Keats once concluded his raptures about a Grecian urn. Yet, as even the Romantic poet knew, beauty is sometimes superficial and truth is sometimes ugly. The French, with their carefully styled Epicurean reputations, are far better placed to appreciate the subtleties of beauty, whether found in high art or in the inanities of everyday life.

The proof is in the latest prize-winning novel by Muriel Barbery. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French L’élégance du hérisson, contends that the beauty of Art is, together with love and friendship, the only thing worth living for – and truth simply doesn’t come into it.

Renée is the widowed concierge of a fine hôtel particulier who plays her role with especial care, down to the bunions on her feet and her disregard for the building’s snooty inhabitants. Paloma is a twelve-year-old girl living on the fifth floor of the hôtel, whose first revelation to us is that she intends to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday in a demonstration of the pervasiveness of her family’s materialism.

The novel is related through the alternating insights of these two characters, both of whom possess an uncommonly lucid intelligence, yet disguise it beneath their expected personas of brusque concierge and rebellious daughter. However, when Kakuro Ozu moves into the building the game is up. While Renée is revealed as the noblewoman she is, Paloma finds a place where she can fulfill her final wish to be herself.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a deceptively elegant masterpiece, one that meanders along between haphazard observations and musings but surprises with its dogged pursuit of the nature of beauty. It is, in essence and without exaggeration, that very thing it sets out to find.

If you enjoyed this book, you should read: the English translation of Muriel Babery’s first novel, Gourmet Raptures (to be published in 2009); The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Hudson; and Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.