Monday, January 28, 2013

The Elegance of the Hedgehog: Review by Shannon



 The Elegance of the Hedgehog

A Review by Shannon

1/27/13



Dear Grandma (and Fellow Family Bookclub Members),

Since I know not everyone has read the book yet, I am keeping my comments more general and don’t have any spoilers in my comments.  I would be very interested to hear thoughts regarding how people felt about the ending of the book.

Historically, I rarely read a book more than once. There have been some notable exceptions where I have overcompensated by re-reading certain books three or more times (All The Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin; the Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter series).  The Elegance of the Hedgehog has not only been added to my slowly growing list of numerously re-read books, it is quickly becoming one of my all time favorites.  First off, I am fascinated on a certain level that it is a translation. How much does the translator’s word choice influence my love of the book? It’s made me curious about how translations work.

Mostly though, I love how the book challenges our pre-conceived notions about people and blows away stereotypes.  It’s made me wonder about people that I meet in everyday life. My work experience as an attorney, particularly as a family law attorney, has taught me that you never really know what is going on in someone’s house just by their appearances, job, education, religion, etc. However, the heroine of Hedgehog (ironically, I struggle to remember her name despite my three readings of the book! – Renee - No one really calls her by her first name) causes me to take a look at the “invisible” people that we see every day: the grocery checker, the garbage person, the mailperson… and wonder what kind of secret life they may have.

Early in the book, Renee is almost found out as the closet intellectual she is after making a literary reference in response to a tenant’s comments to her about Marx.  She then quickly mutters something inane as a cover and then says: "As always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions about me [to fall)]."

Last year, I had an experience where the walls of my own mental assumptions fell and I have been thinking about it ever since.  I was sitting on the packed evening commuter train headed from Chicago back to the suburbs. I was dressed for the business meeting I was returning home from, but was knitting.  I was sitting on the bench seats that lines the upper deck and faced the bench seats across the way.  When the train took off, I noticed that a guy across the aisle was pretty openly looking at me.  He was not your typical commuter - - he had a shaved head, tattoos, combat boots, big black earrings (the kind that look like faux African tribal earrings…I have no idea what they are called, but they leave huge holes in the ears when they are removed) and he was drinking a “tallboy” beer and had a second one in a sack (although a beer on the train does not make you an atypical commuter, not even a tallboy).  Mind you, he is someone I would have hung out with in college, but he did not fit with the crowd on the train at all.  So of course I think, hmm he is checking me out. Almost exactly as the thought crossed my mind, he said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but may I ask why you are using a contrasting yarn when you cast on?” Huh?    He went on to say that he had recently taught himself to knit and had never seen a cast on like that (it’s how you get the stitches on the needle for the first row…).  Well, we ended up having a great chat about knitting and provisional cast on using the “long tail” method.  We were so wrapped up in our conversation that he almost missed his stop and had to make a run for it down the stairs to the first floor of the train.  There was silence after his departure until another guy sitting across from me smiled and said, “Wow”.  I responded, “Who’d have thunk it?”: certainly not me, not until then.

The three main characters in Hedgehog challenge our assumptions about class, race, intelligence, education, and age. I think they are all the more interesting as characters because even though they are not stock characters, Renee and the girl actively work to encourage people to react to them stereotypically, only being recognized for their true selves by each other and by a “foreigner” (who may not be trying to act stereotypically, but is likely perceived in such a way by society). Each time I read the book, I see things that I missed before and find myself underlining yet another passage. To me, Hedgehog is a book that reminds me of how good books can be because I find myself thinking about the book while living my life and about my life, when reading the book.

I hope that you have enjoyed the book and that it has given you food for thought as well.  If you are interested, Muriel Barbery has written another book about one of the other tenants in Renee’s building. It is called, Gourmet Rhapsody.  It’s about the food critic that she mentions offhandedly in Hedgehog.  I think it’s a very good book as well, but not necessarily worthy of multiple re-reads.  Can’t wait for the next selection!

3 comments:

  1. What a great point about the influence of the translator! I have never thought of that before and I read a lot of Paulo Coelho, which has been translated.

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  2. AND your experience on the train was great! I just learned about Covey's 'paradigm shift' in an E.C.E. director's course. It's incredible how much of a struggle it can be to change our perception of something, especially considering generally it has been made in snap. Preconceived notions can "protect" us from the unknown but they can be quite wrong as well.

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    1. Love thinking of it as a paradigm shift. Certainly smacked me upside the head as if to say, you're not as open as you think!

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