In a very elegant apartment building in Paris, there is a 54-year-old concierge named Renee, who takes great pains to hide the fact that she reads philosophy, adores both War and Peace and Japanese culture. On the 5th floor lives " la famille Josse", the youngest of whom, a 12-year-old named Paloma, also hides her superior intelligence as she tries to find meaning in the world as she observes the ironies and idiosyncracies of life. As the novel opens, she has decided there is no meaning to the world, so she will take her own life on her 13th birthday. Eventually, after a Japanese gentlemen moves into the fourth floor apartment, Renee and Paloma meet, immediately recognize the intelligence of the other, and become friends. This was a very interesting book, sometimes a bit hard to read because of the language, but very charming in its own way. A philosophical fable, social satire, and great literature.
The author is French, and the novel has been translated into English. Apparently it's been a runaway bestseller in France. I was drawn to it by the title-
"Madame Michel ( Renee) has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress,but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary- and terrible elegant."
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