The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Barbara Rosenblat is the perfect choice to portray this novel's principal character, Renee, the concierge of a Paris apartment building who looks down her nose at the elites she must kowtow to while surreptitiously studying art, philosophy, and music. Avoiding any tone of pretentiousness, Rosenblat breathes a sense of vulnerability and empathy into this character, which comes through vividly with her impeccable timing. Paloma is a 12-year-old living on the fifth floor who is also appalled by what she sees around her and decides to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday. Cassandra Morris so deftly captures this character that you never for a moment doubt that she really is 12. Further, her light touch keeps Paloma's world-weariness from becoming maudlin. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 31, 2009
This audio version of the surprise French bestseller hits the mark as both performance and story. The leisurely pace of the novel, which explores the upstairs-downstairs goings-on of a posh Parisian apartment building, lends itself well to audio, and those who might have been tempted to skip through the novel's more laborious philosophical passages (the author is a professor of philosophy) will savor these ruminations when read aloud. Tony Award–winning actress Barbara Rosenblat positively embodies the concierge, Renée Michel, who deliberately hides her radiant intelligence from the upper-crust residents of 7 rue de Grenelle, and the performance of Cassandra Morris as the precocious girl who recognizes Renée as a kindred spirit is nothing short of a revelation. Morris's voice, inflection and timbre all conspire to make the performance entirely believable. A Europa paperback.

May 19, 2008
This dark but redemptive novel, an international bestseller, marks the debut in English of Normandy philosophy professor Barbery. Renée Michel, 54 and widowed, is the stolid concierge in an elegant Paris hôtel particulier
. Though “short, ugly, and plump,” Renée has, as she says, “always been poor,” but she has a secret: she's a ferocious autodidact who's better versed in literature and the arts than any of the building's snobby residents. Meanwhile, “supersmart” 12-year-old Paloma Josse, who switches off narration with Renée, lives in the building with her wealthy, liberal family. Having grasped life's futility early on, Paloma plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. The arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who befriends both the young pessimist and the concierge alike, sets up their possible transformations. By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking, Barbery never allows either of her dour narrators to get too cerebral or too sentimental. Her simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts.