“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery; a book with a title that couldn’t fail to warm the heart (who doesn’t like hedgehogs?!), but also a storyline that promises to do the same. However I wasn’t plunged into the easy comforting read I’d expected, in fact I was surprised to find my brain was called into action immediately when Renee, the concierge, brings the word “incunabulum” into the first chapter and ensures the reader is aware she’s familiar with its meaning. I alas was not and quickly reached for my dictionary. (For those of you as ignorant as myself it refers to a book printed before 1501, or an artifact from an early period.) The tone is thus set for the remainder of the novel; Barbery ensures Renee, the concierge, educates the reader and introduces us to the culture and arts that she devours and rejoices in; or maybe I talk only for myself when I say it was an education.
We then go on to meet Paloma, the 12 year-old genius that is so unhappy in herself, and with her life that she concludes the only foreseeable future for her lies in committing suicide and then burning down her parents flat.
Although I found Renee initially to be somewhat annoying with her insistence that others should see her as simple; as she lets us into her extremely private intellectual world and shares her observations and theories with us she slowly eased her way into my heart.
Whereas with Paloma I warmed to her immediately; she too shared the same somewhat irksomely patronizing tone as Renee, but it seemed more fitting in a 12 year-old child and there was something distinctly more credible about her character. All the more so after the riots that took place in London on the night of Monday 8th August.
As I have tried to explain in this blog’s introduction I find the books I read have an astounding capacity of shedding light on a matter of relevance in my own daily life; and it was the night after witnessing teenagers tearing apart buildings and homes, looting the businesses in their local communities and then setting these alight, for no apparent reason, that I reached the passage in the book where Paloma contemplates what it might be that makes kids want to burn cars…
“There was a programme about kids burning cars in the banlieue. When I saw these images I wondered what it is that makes a kid want to burn a car. What is going on in their heads? And then this thought came into my mind: what about me? Why do I want to set fire to the apartment? Journalists talk about unemployment and poverty; I talk about selfishness and duplicity of the family. But these are all hollow phrases. There has always been unemployment and poverty and pathetic families. And yet, people don’t go burning cars and apartments every day of the week. Honestly! I decided that, in the end, they were all false pretexts.”
When I read this passage London was still smoking from the fires that had been blazing the previous night and the protagonists in the pictures released were assumed to be the angry youth from the poorest communities in London; although Barbery had put this profound thought into the head of 12 year-old Paloma I was nevertheless curious as to where she intended to take her stream of thought as I, along with thousands of others sat wondering on Tuesday morning, how on earth anything at destructive and disastrous could have fallen upon London. Some people blamed the government, some people blamed the parents, some people blamed the police, some people blamed the economy and others blamed society as a whole. I read on in my book wondering what light it might shed on the mayhem taking place in London and discovered that Paloma, the 12 year-old genius, blamed a lack of culture.
“…maybe the greatest anger and frustration come not from unemployment or poverty or the lack of a future but from the feeling that you have no culture, because you’ve been torn between cultures, between incompatible symbols. How can you exist if you don’t know where you are? What do you do if your culture will always be that of a Thai fishing village and of Parisian grands bourgeois at the same time? Or if you’re the son of immigrants but also the citizen of an old, conservative nation? So you burn cars, because when you have no culture, you’re no longer a civilized animal, you’re a wild beast. And a wild beast burns and kills and pillages.”
Could the August riots in London be summed up as the work of a group of youth lacking in culture and identity? I discussed the idea with a friend that works in journalism and he thought it hit the nail right on the head; it wasn’t a problem of race, religion, creed or colour but more a problem with the children of today being raised in a world of gossip magazines, computer games and reality TV shows; where people who have actually accomplished a grand sum of nothing other than earning the title of Z-list celebrity are granted fame, fortune and riches. Why shouldn’t these people think the same was owed them? Who do these children identify with? The people they see on TV and in magazines that populate their world. All of those destroying their communities were British, but what does being British mean to them? I’m sure most of them wouldn’t know.
As the arrests were made and sentences served for those that had been involved in the riots it transpired it wasn’t just youth that were involved but adults that taught in primary schools too. Nor was it simply an uneducated strata of society as there were graduates from Britain’s top universities that were caught on camera hurling bricks through police car windows. Nor was it related to wealth in that some of those involved came from wealthy backgrounds. Could a lack of culture be the sole unifying factor amongst them all?
Once again I found the book I was reading may not have given me all the answers but it certainly gave me plenty of food for thought. I think it will take many months before anyone can really say what went on in London in early August; from what source was the madness borne; it may never be clear. Maybe the profound thoughts of a 12 year-old character in Barbery’s novel will prove to be accurate. And so back to the book; it certainly wasn’t the feel-good book the Guardian had promised me, but it was a thought provoking journey into the minds of two very different yet very profound and intellectual minds. Barbery herself is clearly an author who is not only comfortable in her own upper intellectual strata; but also possesses a cunning which means she can make these thoughts and ideas palatable to the general public. Would it be too idealistic or naive to imagine if Barbery started writing for some of those gossip magazine the British populace so loved to devour that we might be one step closer to ensuring the London riots were an act never to be repeated again?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/19/elegance-hedgehog-muriel-barbery?INTCMP=SRCH
themawoflife 
I didn’t like that novel at all, however I do like the way you analyse that particular extract, drawing a parallel with what happened in London in August. You’re right, who on earth can these children identify with…? Your article is a clever way of trying to understand why it all started.
As for the novel itself, don’t worry you’re not ignorant! To me that’s precisely why that book is pure upside down snobbery and sham humbleness. We’re reading about a gifted concierge who judges everyone from the top of her “culture” and her pretentious philosophical contemplations, which are simply arduous copy-paste of some Philosophy tutorials recycled by the author, as she herself post-graduated in that subject..