The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I don't consider myself particularly well-versed in French culture: however, even I could tell, from the first few chapters of Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, that this book was going to be French with a capital F: Nothing really happens, and then one small thing happens, and life is momentarily rescued from its essential meaninglessness. Meanwhile, there are a lot of reflections on the hypocrisy of the upper class (one of the narrators says, without a hint of sarcasm, "Oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence!"), the vulgarity of popular culture, and the inability of people to ever really connect with one another. 

If this sounds depressing, well... it is. But it is also worth reading. Barbery, a professor of philosophy, has done what few writers can: she has written a successful philosophical novel. Normally, this kind of novel suffers, because neither story nor philosophy gets adequate space. In The Elegance of the Hedgehog, however, Barbery wisely chooses to go light on plot and heavy on character development, which lends itself to philosophical musings. We get the sense that these characters are deeply invested in Understanding Life, and that is what takes the book beyond mere pretension. More human than a philosophy textbook, more intellectual than most novels, this book is an engaging examination of some of life's weightiest questions: What is the meaning of existence? What, if anything, makes life worth living? What is the purpose of Art? What is Beauty? And why are rich people so uniformly stupid? 

These are the questions that haunt the book's two protagonists. Renee Michel, the primary narrator, is an aging concierge in a posh Parisian apartment. She plays the part of an ignorant working-class woman, but she is secretly a brilliant autodidact who delights in Russian literature, Japanese films, and Dutch still lives. For most of her life, she has been content to live a double life, quietly gloating over the stupidity of, well, almost everyone except her (the other exceptions include her best friend, Manuela, a Portuguese immigrant with more class than the people whose houses she cleans, and Renee's deceased husband). 

Meanwhile, five floors above her, twelve-year-old Paloma has a secret of her own. Paloma is hyper-articulate and keenly observant: her sections are some of the book's funniest, as she ruthlessly exposes her family's hypocrisy. Anyone who has been an adolescent will recognize the unhappiness behind her intolerance, and indeed, Paloma is the character for whom meaning is truly a life or death issue: if she can't find something to make life worthwhile in the next few months, she is going to commit suicide on her 13th birthday, though not before setting fire to her family's luxury apartment (no one will be there--"after all, I'm not a criminal," she explains). 

There were times when I found myself frustrated by the book's style: it is dense and slow-moving.  Indeed, this is a book that is not afraid to flex its intellectual muscles, another way in which it diverges from many American novels. (Anyone who says they read Hedgehog without looking up at least some of the words or references is almost certainly lying: eructation? phenomenology? William Ockham?) Additionally, the book's protagonists delight in life's finer things in a way that most Americans might find a bit snobby (I did, and most people think I'm a snob). When they are not exploring life's essential questions, they are succumbing to bouts of Proustian ecstasy over a rugby player's pose or the arrangement of a camilla on moss. 

But Barbery's insights, especially in the latter half of the book, when our two heroes finally meet, make the novel worth pursuing for anyone who enjoys a bit of philosophical rumination. It's not plot-driven (I'm honestly not sure the French even have a word for "plot"), and it's not exactly exciting, but it is thought-provoking. And, in the end, life is momentarily rescued from meaninglessness, and best of all, these self-absorbed, defensive characters begin to realize the necessity of compassion. To me, that was the book's saving grace: after a while, I got tired of hearing about how stupid, crass, and cruel humans are. But Renee and Paloma begin to recognize that others besides themselves may have interior lives; that others besides themselves may be sad, or searching. 

It is this injection of the human that saves the book from mere intellectual masturbation. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is, in the end, about people--all of its existential questions derive from genuine human longing. This book may be French, but the loneliness, grief, and love at its core are decidedly universal. 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This book, originally published in Sweden after Larsson's death, is in many ways an old-fashioned morality tale: Crime, both white-collar and cold-blooded, is at its heart, and it is a scathing indictment of the conscience-shocking behavior of men in power. They embezzle; they rape; they murder. But this idea is not new, and it is not what makes the book so compulsively readable. Rather, it is the murder mystery at the story's center that compels the reader forward: Larsson has, first and foremost, written a heckuva thriller.

The story's protagonist is not a detective but a financial journalist (Larsson himself worked for many years as an editor). Recently (and perhaps wrongly) convicted of libel, Mikael Blomkvist is contacted by Henrik Vanger, an aging former CEO and member of a well-known corporate dynasty, to solve a murder that occurred over 40 years ago: his beloved niece Harriet disappeared without a trace from a small island off the Swedish coast. The murder perplexed family members and police officials alike; nevertheless, Vanger wants Blomkvist to give it a shot.

This premise is one of several moments in the book in which Larsson demands that the reader suspend her disbelief. Blomkvist drops everything to live on an island with Vanger for an entire year; he attracts and beds women with unrelenting ease; his hacker accomplice can gather literally any information he needs within 24 hours. More central to the story's progress is the improbable circumstances under which the teenage Harriet was murdered: Because a fire occurred on the island's only bridge to the mainland that same day, the case is a so-called "locked room mystery." Only about 15 people, all of them members of the Vanger clan, could have actually committed the crime.

I initially balked at what struck me as obvious plot devices. However, this book is not necessarily attempting realism. It is a thriller, and thrillers do not operate under the same rules as realistic fiction, my normal domain as a reader. Harriet's murder is an engaging puzzle precisely because it can be logically investigated and neatly analyzed.

In many ways, though, the murder itself is a plot device, meant to support Larsson's central thesis: power corrupts. Corporate and government officials, both those involved in the murder and those featured in related subplots, are guilty of financial corruption and sadistic personal habits. Yet Larsson's accusatory finger points inward, as well. Even the story's heroes are frequently morally degenerate. Obvious underdogs, righteous journalists, victimized women--they are sympathetic, but they also lie, cheat, and commit violent crimes of their own.

Incidentally, that fact is probably what saves the novel from slipping into self-important moralism: it raises questions even as it indicts. When is violence wrong, and when is it necessary? When should then truth be concealed? When does an end justify the means? These questions are interesting, if not always smoothly or subtly executed, and they have remained with me now that the book is done. But while I read, I read for one reason: What really happened to Harriet that day? The answer, and the manner in which it unfolds, is enough to make the book worth reading.