![]() ![]() Her simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts. ![]() ![]() By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking, Barbery never allows either of her dour narrators to get too cerebral or too sentimental. The arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who befriends both the young pessimist and the concierge alike, sets up their possible transformations. In an elegant htel particulier in Paris, Rene, the concierge, is all but invisible-short, plump, middle-aged, with bunions on her feet and an addiction to television soaps. Having grasped life's futility early on, Paloma plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. ![]() Meanwhile, “supersmart” 12-year-old Paloma Josse, who switches off narration with Renée, lives in the building with her wealthy, liberal family. Though “short, ugly, and plump,” Renée has, as she says, “always been poor,” but she has a secret: she's a ferocious autodidact who's better versed in literature and the arts than any of the building's snobby residents. Renée Michel, 54 and widowed, is the stolid concierge in an elegant Paris hôtel particulier This dark but redemptive novel, an international bestseller, marks the debut in English of Normandy philosophy professor Barbery. ![]()
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