Product Description

Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society s expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this façade lies the real Renée: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renée lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever. The Gourmet, Muriel Barbery's first novel is published on 1st September 2009.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #856 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-14
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• New
• Mint Condition
• Dispatch same day for order received before 12 noon
• Guaranteed packaging
• No quibbles returns

Review
Resistance is futile...you might as well buy it before someone recommends it for your book group. It s charm will make you say yes --The Guardian Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France --The Observer This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal --Good Housekeeping --Good Housekeeping

Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France --The Observer

This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal --Good Housekeeping

About the Author
Muriel Barbery teaches philosophy. L'Elegance du herisson is her second novel. Her first book, Une gourmandise (Gallimard, 2000) has been translated into twelve languages.

Customer Reviews

ultimately magnificent
If there was ever a book that deserved sticking with, this is it. I have to admit that at first I really hated it, for all the reasons that the other reviewers who hated it gave - pretentious language, arrogant characters, boring philosophical pontification, BUT I persevered, mostly because it's my book group read, and I found myself warming to the book more and more as I got further in to it. Generally the main characters in a book go on a journey, and that's true of this book, but I think that I, as the reader, also went on a journey, perhaps even more so, as my attitude towards the characters changed until I truly loved both Renee and Paloma. As another reviewer said, the plot comes alive after the arrival of the Japanese gentleman, and I became competely gripped from this point on. Toward the end I was actually pleading out loud to the book to make things turn out the way I wanted, and having just finished reading, I'm still wiping away tears. I once read a book called 'splashes of joy in the cesspool of life' and I think that title somewhat sums up the theme of this beautiful book - beauty in the midst of tragedy. I could so easily have given up on this book, but I'm very glad I stuck with it.

Delight at every turn
Enticing first chapter draws you in, setting the scene with its delicious turns of phrase. The book then takes a while to re-capture that spirit but its wonderful use of language, perfectly translated, with its deliberate attention to grammar and vocabulary is delightful. A many-layered story written from two entirely different points of view, clarified by the use of different typefaces, makes this an excellent individual or book club read. One is 12, the other 54, both trying to hide their true selves from others around them. It is humorous, revealing, compassionate and gently teasing of the elite Parisian community it is set within.

Tiresome, snobby and pretentious
I can't understand why so many people have clearly forced themselves to get over the horrifically snobby, smug, self-satisfied and pretentious aspects of this book to try to persuade themselves that the last half justifies it all. I found it a clumsy and tiresome read from start to finish. I have a very high tolerance indeed for ghastly protagonists (and Lordy, she is ghastly) but this main character is not in the slightest bit credible. And the sheer ridiculous and cheap fairy-tale Saved-By-A-Man-of-Her-Own-True-Standing aspect of the ending irritated me beyond measure. A really immature piece of writing, I thought. I hated it.