The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery was published in 2006 and translated by Alison Anderson into English for publication in 2008. The novel has been translated into more than 40 languages and was a major bestseller in France. The novel was adapted into a film called The Hedgehog (Le Hérisson) in 2009 to critical acclaim.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog follows the narrative point of view of two erudite narrators: Renée, a concierge who keeps her intellectualism a secret, and Paloma, a 12-year-old resident of Renée’s building whose emerging understandings of philosophy and society make her contemplate suicide. The novel includes several allusions to literature, philosophy, film, music, and art, highlighting the importance of texts as a space for understanding what it means to be human.

Content Warning: This novel contains references to self-harm and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Renée Michel is a concierge for a wealthy Parisian building. On the outside, she is old, poor, and not particularly friendly, but on the inside, Renée is a voracious reader, a thoughtful philosopher, and a stoic individualist. Renée keeps her intelligence a secret from her employers because she assumes that wealthy people won’t be able to understand a concierge’s intellectualism. Renée spends her days running errands for the tenants of her building, spending time with her beloved cat, reading, and having tea with her friend Manuela, a cleaning lady in the building.

Paloma Josse is a 12-year-old girl who lives in Renée’s building. She is dissatisfied and frustrated with her wealthy family and sees the fallacy of status all around her. She keeps a diary in which she records movements of the world and profound thoughts in an attempt to find a meaning for which to live. If she can’t figure out the purpose of human life before her 13th birthday, she plans to die by suicide.

Both Renée and Paloma are inspired to revise their opinions about people with the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu. Kakuro is Japanese, introspective, and bears immediate witness to Paloma’s and Renée’s inner selves. Kakuro develops friendships with Paloma and Renée that startle the two narrators into discovering the value of human connection. He encourages Paloma to seek out Renée, and Paloma’s friendship with Renée is one of mutual respect, a shared safe space, and parallel ways of thinking about the world. He also strikes up a close friendship that hints at romantic interest with Renée that allows her to feel a deep, intellectual connection that she has never felt with a man before.

On the cusp of a new life that has come with her blossoming relationship with Kakuro and a more complete understanding of herself and the world around her, Renée dies saving the life of a neighborhood man from incoming traffic while she is out running errands. Her death inspires Paloma to abandon her thoughts about suicide and live in a more humanistic way.