Muriel Barbery's The Life Of Elves

"You see, this is a tale, of course, but it is also the truth."

The Life of Elves (2015, 2016 for the English translation) is Muriel Barbery's third book, and her first after the enormous success of The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

That's always a tough place to be, and without making a very thorough search, I think the general feeling is that it was a falling off from her previous one.

But I liked it better. And I liked the previous one.

It's a story of two changeling girls, Maria raised in France, and Clara raised in Italy. They have mystical powers that need nourishing and mystical enemies that need to be kept away until they've matured enough to face them. The first of their challenges ends the first book; there's supposed to be a second involving the same characters.

I think Barbery has pretty successfully captured a folk tale atmosphere in this. It favorably reminded me of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms of Elfin or ballads like 'Thomas the Rhymer' and 'Tam Lin.' But at the same time she's using that atmosphere to go after her usual philosophical concerns. Now it's true there are places where the prose felt convoluted, and I assume that's there in the French. Alison Anderson, who translated both her earlier books, also translated this, as well as other authors, and she seems to me to be good at it. I can't imagine she introduced the convolutions of her own.

It is certainly more mystical and less funny than her previous books; well, that probably goes with the fairy tale territory. But the secondary characters were engaging, maybe particularly the Italian maestro, the French priest, and the drunken warrior. I'll be reading the sequel when I can.

And now I want preserved chanterelle pie! When the French family decides on a big country meal for a strategy session, that's what they serve.

Muriel Barbery's The Elegance Of The Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is Muriel Barbery's second novel. It came out in French in 2006, won several awards, and was a huge success; it was translated into English by Alison Anderson in 2008, where it also succeeded, and led to her first novel Gourmet Rhapsody coming out in English a year later.

It's told in two alternating voices, that of Renée, the widowed concierge of a hôtel particulier, (a high-end condo as far as I can tell) and of Paloma, the twelve-year-old daughter of one of the rich residents of the hôtel. Both are preternaturally thoughtful and well-read, and both are determined to hide that fact. Renée listens to Mahler and reads Marx, but knows that no slothful, irritable concierge can be seen doing any such thing. Paloma can see no way to use her haiku-writing and her disdain; she plans to commit suicide on her next birthday.

And both do hide their intelligence and their goals and their dissatisfactions, until a rich Japanese man, Kokuro Ozu, buys a vacant floor, and sees through the both of them.

It's the voices in this that make it work. It's a funny book--but alas all too accurate--about the fact that smart people, and especially smart women, find it socially difficult to demonstrate and use in public their intelligence. Especially true, as in the case of Renée, where the class background is 'inappropriate.' Each of the two women present the events of the story (which overlap) in little mini-essays that are intelligent and thoughtful and funny.

But I do feel the plot needed some work in this. There is one, but it starts late and then rushes to a not very satisfactory conclusion. Paloma has an insufficiently justified epiphany that makes things OK again for her; Renée's fate was equally rushed and unjustified by events.

Still I found it amusing and insightful enough that I got the new one by Barbery (The Life Of Elves) from the library, where it will be the subject of the next book club meeting at my local branch.

It also fits WomenInTranslation month, which, though I hadn't planned it, I'm proud to now be part of.