Women's Book Club: Elegance of the Hedgehog January 12, 2010

Hi. Some of The Girls is a group of women who enjoy life, conversations and going out. Every month, we'll have a Tuesday Book Club.

This month we'll be discussing "Elegance of the Hedgehog" with Monica as the moderator. We will meet at 6:30 PM which will give us time to order dinner and get settled, the actual book discussion will begin at 7:00 PM.

From Booklist
In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renee, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super" to avoid suspicion from the building's pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renee's observations and Paloma's journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand. --Heather Paulson

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