Day 13: A Fictional Book

99% of everything I read falls into this category. I'm not really a big magazine reader; I don't read the newspaper (though I do read a bit on news websites, just to get updates...). And I don't read much non-fiction. I love my fantasies, suspense-thrillers, certain pop-fiction authors and most of the classics I've read. I really only have two main criteria for a book I enjoy and a third that applies to books I would definitely read again:

1. It's not trashy.
2. I can get "into" the book... generally without reading half of it first.
3. (For really good books) It made me think.
   

I don't really have specific genres that I limit myself to... In fact I will really read almost anything. I am particularly fond of adolescent literature; I think books in this age bracket are written better than most books written for adults. I have some favorite authors, but I love to branch out and discover new authors as well. I always read the flyleaf or back cover before purchasing a book, but I've never read the last page except after I've read the rest of the book. In fact, in many instances I will place my hand over the next few paragraphs so that my eyes don't inadvertently skip down and read ahead. It's just not as fun when you know the ending.

So I kept putting off writing this post for a few days because I was worried about how much I would write. I can talk (or write) about books for a lot longer than I can probably talk about much else - and I can talk a lot about almost anything. And I'm pretty sure that if I were to continue this train of thought, I'll be sitting at my computer for days... So, to the point.

A Fictional Book.

I've also been stuck about which single book to pick. It might be the easy road, but why not pick the one I'm reading right now? Novel idea. (Bad joke, and remarkably, unintentional).

I am in a book club with several other women in my ward at church. Right now we are reading:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

And I completely admit that this book has fought ever facet of rule number two. I have been struggling. I read Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows in less than 24 hours. I was definitely "in" (of course I have a Harry Potter addiction... there was a period in my life that Harry Potter - the books, not the boy - was known as my boyfriend. We were, simply, inseparable. And when I'm reading Harry Potter, everything in my life is subsequently related to something that I read for several months following.). But with Hedgehog I could not really have been much further from "in". I started this book over 3 weeks ago (tells you something). It drove me crazy, was slow and abstract... and yet I couldn't stop reading it either.

Well, just yesterday something clicked. I have read the last 100 pages in about 2 hours... and I am now 35 pages from the end (another reason I've been avoiding my blog). I'm not entirely sure that I would recommend this book to just anyone, because it does require so much effort and... desire, maybe, to like it - at least toward the beginning.

Hedgehog is told from two perspectives. 1) Renee: 50 years old, homely, overweight, and the concierge for a very uppity residence in Paris. Oh, and she's completely and utterly addicted to all forms of art and expanding knowledge (books, movies, cultures, foods, art-art, etc.)... a huge part of her that she has spent most of her life hiding from basically everyone she's ever known. 2) Paloma: a 12-year-old resident of Renee's building, daughter to a prominent politician and pure genius. So much genius, in fact, that she has determined at her ripe old age that life doesn't get much better than living in a fish bowl, and thus plans to swallow a ton of sleeping pills on her thirteenth birthday right before incinerating the the apartment building.

Interesting premise, yes. Potential to go one of two ways - fantastic or flop.

As I mentioned before, it takes a while for you to get into it. Both Paloma and Renee are word aficionados, which can get a bit heavy at times, but the translator (it was originally written in French) does an amazing job... you completely forget it's a translation!

I knew I was hooked in the bathroom. There's a chapter that takes place in the bathroom in the fourth floor suite of Renee's building... and I loved it SO much I read the who scene out loud to Mom. So dang funny. From there it gets better... I feel that at that moment I began to see both heroines for who they *really* are instead of who they wanted me to see them as (which, in essence, is the point of the novel... at least I'm convinced it is).

The fact that the author can create these same feelings in me as she did in the characters speaks volumes, I think. At the same moment that the characters begin to "see" each other as they really are, there is another level of understanding that you as the reader begin to gain about the characters... even though you've known their secrets all along. It's as if the characters become more of their true selves the more they share those "selves" with each other... and with you.

I don't really want to give away any more, and I can't really spoil the end since I won't finish it until tomorrow. But The Elegance of the Hedgehog passed all of my "rules" for a good book... even if it took a while.