num_pages: 325
description: A moving funny triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.We are in the center of Paris in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Rene the concierge is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat cantankerous addicted to television. Yet unbeknownst to her employers Rene is a cultured autodidact who adores art philosophy music and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants who for their part are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture a good but not an outstanding student an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Rene hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Rene's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving funny triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.
language: English
title: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
publisher: Europa Editions