The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Was about to return this to the library without recording my thoughts on it, terrible!

 Synopsis from Amazon:

We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who, for their part, are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.
Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

That might have been misleading, this post is going to consist more of profound (personal opinion) quotations from book.

And yet there's nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they're adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. "Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is" is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children.

^I wish that was the passage we have to analyze for the English Existentialism test T__T Every line in there follows that philosophy! Starting from we lead inauthentic lives by believing what others sat, to life is meaningless. I think this is pretty true, at least I've once believed that the answers to every question would become apparent once you've reach adulthood, whatever that may be.
@Rui: I was right! It did come from this book haha. You must read ittt!

More Existentialism from Paloma:

[...] no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success have no greater value than beign a failure. It's just more comfortable. And even then, I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something. 

"ignorance is bliss" in other words. Gosh looking back to the earlier chapters narrated by Paloma, life in her eyes sure is depressing o_o

Renée's view is slightly more positive

[...]and society, a territorial field mined with the powerful charges of hierarchy, is sinking into the nothingness of Meaning. [...] all have become primitive hominoids whose nudging and posturing, [...] language and codes are all located on the genetic map of an average primate, and all adds up to no more than this: hold your rank, or die.
At times like this you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with yoru spiritual illusions, and you wish feverishly that something might rescue you from your biological desiring.

This ties into some points raised in The Denial of Death (oh Ms. G, in retrospect, you taught us a loooot).

So: have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them? Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savour a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives.

Also relating to The Denial of Death and a favourite of mine to think about when trying to avoid work (aka now): why do we (or at least I) want objects/events/feelings to last forever if the value of those things arise from their fleeting nature (durr forgive the bad wording). Like, we value our lives because one day we will die.

There is always the easy way out, although I am loath to use it. I have no children, I do not watch television, and I do not believe in God - all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous neccessoty of finding projects to construct in the vacuuity of out frivolous lives: by beguilling our eyes, relevision releases our minds from the great work of making meaning. Finally, God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease. Thus, as I have neigher future nor progeny nor pixels to deaden the cosmic awareness of absurdity, and in the certainty of the end and the anticipation of the void, I believe I can affirm that I have not chosen the easy path. 

This is intensely humorous, precisely because of the amount of truth it contains.

The seal of eternity ... What absent world does our heart intuit when we see these dishes and cups [...]? Beyond the frame of the painting there is, no doubt, the tumult boredom of everyday life - itself an unceasing and futile pursuit, consumed by projects; but within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued form human longing. [...] Even though tomorrow we will die - we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now?

First though was minecraft when reading the latter part was: minecraft! Goes further to prove how absurd our reaction to life is.

Anyways, enough typing here, should reallocate to chem lab. So I leave you with aria, which the book mentions near the end: