Lastly I'll nominate The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. This has to do with an apartment building in Paris, and in particular two different people inside of it. They're both living lives with secretive passions underneath their accepted facades, leading to resignation or ennui, but a sudden change caused by a resident's death upends them both. It seems quite different than our previous lit club selections and so stretches the boundaries of the club a bit for a change in perspective and I think still fits... and I also wanted to throw in at least one non-U.K./U.S. nomination this month! It's 324 pages, from France and published in 2006.
Goodreads
Quote:
Renée is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society's expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this facade lies the real Renée passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives.
Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renée lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever.
By turn moving and hilarious, this unusual novel became the French publishing phenomenon of 2007: from an initial print run of 3,000 to sales of over 2 million in hardback.
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