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Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm
Is it any? I saw it (in English) in a bookshop recently and thought it look very, very interesting. The title alone caught me eye, and the back cover blurb did make me want to read more. (What I would normally do at that stage is skim through bits of the book, but as not everyone with me at the time was interested in hanging around looking at books, I decided not to  ) |
"is it any?" yes, it's probably any at least sometimes, depending on the value of "any".
more seriously, i saw it in the library a year ago (or more, maybe...) and the title caught my eye because i have a particular fondness for hedgehogs. and obviously at the library you can take any book that catches your eye without worrying if they're any good, since they're free and you're going to give them back afterwards anyway. however, as usual i borrowed 5 books (the maximum you can take) and read others first, and by the time i got to that one i only had time to read about 10 or so pages before i had to return it. i wanted to extend the loan but since it was reserved by someone else i couldn't. the 10 pages i read were enough to make me want to read the whole thing ; whatever else you can say, it's gorgeously written.
i've since discovered that it was the smash hit of 2008 (i don't really pay much attention to book reviews ; i will read them if i come across them but i don't seek them out, because i prefer to make up my own mind about what to read in general, and my taste doesn't always match the critics'... so i am mostly unaware of what are the latest smash hits) and now it's being made into a film. depending on whom you ask it's a treasure of a book (the readers and booksellers) or a trite, consensual caricature of the eternal struggle of the "people" vs. the "elite" whose 2 main characters are antipathic and whose story is unoriginal (the critics).
like i said, i don't care much to follow the critics, so it's possible i'll end up hating it but at least i'll make up my own mind. in any case, i think it's worth reading it. although i've no idea how good the translation is. and it's been quite a while since i found a recent ebook in french i was actually interested in reading, so i'm really looking forward to reading something written this century for a change (not that i don't enjoy the classics, it's just that from time to time i like to vary my pleasures).