from the
Albany Times-Union
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” focuses on two super-smart, super-solitary female characters — each of whom goes to great lengths to hide and protect her rich inner life from others — and the unlikely friendship that grows up between them. “Unlikely” because one is a 54-year-old concierge (“poor, discreet and insignificant”) of a luxury apartment building in Paris and the other a 12-year-old girl who lives in the building (“My parents are rich, my family is rich and my sister and I are, therefore, as good as rich”). The young girl is planning to kill herself on her 13th birthday, to avoid the mediocrity that she is sure will come with growing up, unless she is able to find something to make life worth living.
This light but ultimately affecting novel has been a tremendous success for its author, Muriel Barbery. This is her second novel; the first, “Gourmet Rhapsody,” was well reviewed but did not achieve the same kind of meteoric success. Since its publication in France in 2006, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” has been translated into 31 languages and received many literary prizes. It was published in English in 2008 and has spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list, where it is currently at #13.
The University at Albany’s Writers’ Institute had planned to bring Ms. Barbery to Albany for a reading and panel discussion on April 28, but difficulties with the other panelists’ schedules have forced the cancellation of the entire event. We were able, however, to interview the author by email recently about the book and how its success has affected her.
Q: Your book has been extremely successful in France and internationally. Has that success changed your life in many ways? Has it made it easier for you to devote yourself to your writing, or has it created new pressures?
A: Many things have changed in my life, but not the essential things. My goals, aspirations, friends, and tastes have not changed. On the contrary, we’ve been able to realize what has for many years been our fondest dream, that is, to live in Japan, in Kyoto. I am free of all constraints and obligations, that is, beyond the obligation to write, which I freely consent to. As far as pressure is concerned, yes, that exists; but it does not have anything to do with success, which, on the contrary, has afforded me conditions that are exceptionally favorable to creativity. I feel exactly the same things I felt during the period between my first and my second novel, when I was completely unknown. I worry at not being able to write what I want; I am afraid of not progressing far enough, of deceiving myself.
Q: How did the idea for these characters come to you?
A: Renée, the concierge, was a secondary character in my first novel. I ended up reading some of the chapters of “Gourmet Rhapsody” several years after it had been published — totally by chance, because the book was buried in my library. And as I was reading I recalled something my editor had told me. In the original manuscript, I had Renée talking in a way that was extremely crude, stereotypical; she came across as a caricature of a concierge. My editor said : “You’re a novelist, anything is possible; your concierge could just as well express herself like the Duchess of Guermantes.” I remembered these words and I suddenly had the urge to attempt the voice of a well-read and erudite concierge; I sat down at my desk and wrote the first pages of “Hedgehog.”
As far as Paloma is concerned, she emerged a little bit later and rather by chance during the rewriting. My husband (and first reader) found the character interesting and suggested I give her a voice.
Q: When you were writing, did you move back and forth between the two characters after a few pages, the way the book does? Or did you spend more time with each character before returning to the other?
A: Well, I wrote more than two hundred pages in which there was a single voice, that of Renée. Then Paloma emerged. I then changed the voice so as to insert the new chapters of the young girl between those of the concierge. Finally, I had almost finished using this technique of alternating voices. Only a few chapters from the end did I begin writing both characters concurrently.
Q: Can I ask what brought you to Japan? Both your main characters love Japan — is this something that you share in common with them? What aspects of Japanese culture interest you?
A: Yes, of course, the interest Renée and Paloma have for Japan is mine, and my husband’s, who actually introduced me to Japan. “Interest” is far too weak a word: we have long been lovers of Japanese culture and since we moved to Kyoto, a town that we are head over heels in love with, our feelings for this country have been confirmed. Our fascination began mostly as an aesthetic one, and has remained so: we are fascinated by the ability to create pure beauty, at the same time refined and pure; the kind of thing you see in the slow, sweet sumptuousness of Ozu’s films, in the splendor of the Japanese gardens, in the discreet sophistication of ikebana … It has had us under its spell for over ten years. And we are still at the dawn of our discoveries … But what we also love about Japan, without negating its somber and terrible face, is its repertoire of behaviors: the subtle politesse, the sense of security that results from social solidarity, a very special form of candor, as well. We don’t know how long these things can resist the infernal spirals of the contemporary world, but for now they make life here incredibly sweet and civil.
by Elizabeth Floyd Mair, a freelance writer living in Guilderland.
