The Elegance of the Hedgehog— Muriel Barbery's Writing Style

The novel "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery is narrated by both Renée, a concierge of a Parisian luxury apartment building, and Paloma, the twelve-year-old daughter of a rich parliamentarian who lives in the building.  The novel is structured in short chapters from Renée's point of view with Paloma's journal entries mixed in throughout.
Renée's chapters are written in a conversational, yet learned style.  She asks rhetorical questions and refers to the reader as "you".  Renée often asks the reader "does this never happen to you?" while chronicling an event in her life or a thought she has had (Barbery 173). The style of Renée's chapters cause the reader to feel as if he or she is listening to Renée share her life story while interjecting background information such as "I am a widow, I am short, ugly, and plump, ... I correspond so very well to what social prejudice had collectively construed to be a typical French concierge," to add context (19).  Although concierges are stereotypically  uneducated and uncultured, Renée is a proletarian autodidact and is secretly very intelligent. She is "a complete slave to vocabulary," as reflected by the erudite diction in her chapters (82).  For example, she says that "the preeminence of human consciousness seems to many to be the manifestation of something divine" when speaking of phenomenology (59).  The conversational aspect of the style of Renée's chapters represent her humble and light personality while her insightful use of vocabulary and flawless syntax represent her worldly knowledge.
Paloma's perspective is shared through journal entries titled either profound thoughts or journals of the movement of the world.  Paloma has decided to "have the greatest number possible of profound thoughts, and to write them down in this notebook" before she commits suicide on her thirteenth birthday (26).  Her profound thoughts begin with haikus or tankas such as "What do you drink/ What do you read/ At breakfast/ And I know who/ You are" which demonstrates her love of Japanese culture, while her journals of the movement of the world begin with one-line sayings that summarize the main messages of her writing (92).  As "an intellectual (who makes fun of other intellectuals)," Paloma's entries are full of social satire and mockery (37).  For example, she describes her father as "a kid who's playing the dead serious grown-up" to describe that he lacks maturity and only pretends to be an important man (93). It is understandable why Paloma is so annoyed and disgusted by those around her, for she is surrounded by shallow elite who care only of material and social power, but her writing style so lacks humility that she often appears to have a holier-than-thou attitude when it comes to her own morality and intellect. Barbery's style in writing both Renée and Paloma's sections gives the reader insight into the intellect that both characters hide from the outside world.