Staff Picks This Week: Jolie

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Narrated by two closet intellectuals - Renee, the 50-year old widowed concierge who tries to keep up the appearance of a concierge while secretly enjoying Tolstoy and fine cuisine - and Paloma, the precocious 12-year-old who's decided life's not worth living for insightful and hilarious reasons. They are finally brought together by M. Ozu, who recognises their talent and potential as no others do. Both narrators despise and mourn the class-concious inhabitants of the building and offer their takes on life. Despite the two narrators though, the book's spotlight is inevitably by Renee, who - after reading the book - really makes you turn around and look at people twice.

Barbery is a great writer, and as a professor of philosophy, she incorporates some really interesting stories and thoughts into her books. The staff all really loved this book, as did I - and I'm really looking forward to reading Barbery's newest, Gourmet Rhapsody.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Enzo the dog is the narrator of this story. He's picked out as a puppy by his loving owner, race car driver Denny Swift. This completely loveable dog likes watching the TV and Denny's old racing videos, and travels with Denny throughout his life through marriage, children, love and loss. Anyone with a dog can appreciate the loyalty Enzo shows, as well as his occasional hilarious outbursts of anger at not having opposable thumbs - lashing out in one chapter, for example, at monkeys, who are too stupid to have been given the joy of having thumbs. By the end of the book, I felt I had really gotten to know Enzo, and I never wanted the book to end. This is a great read.

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

In 1930 Czechoslovakia, the new Mr and Mrs Landauer commission a man they meet on their honeymoon, Rainier van Abt, to build a modern house for them. His answer is the Landauer House, a house with a glass room that is the talk of the town, where they raise their two children and hold dinners and piano recitals, and where Mrs Liesel Landauer feels truly content. But when the Nazi regime begins to gain ground in Europe, the family has to find a way to escape, eventually leaving their beloved house, never to truly return. In their absence, the house becomes many things - a lover's paradise, a bartering centre, a place for research - always waiting for the return of its original inhabitants.

The Glass House is a beautifully written story, and while Mawer writes a great deal about what goes on the house itself, his main focus is on the Landauer family and Liesel's closest friend, Hana, through their extramarital affairs, trials and tribulations. This is a beautifully written novel, and is an extremely enjoyable novel. It's not a book for the beach, and it's a sad novel, but beautiful nonetheless.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I had previously read Fingersmith and immensely enjoyed it. Then Sarah Waters' newest book, The Little Stranger, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, so of course I had to read it. Waters is an amazing writer of historical novels, but this was a little bit different from her previous books. It's partly a ghost story, but mostly it's a novel about class in postwar Britain.

Dr Faraday is a quiet country doctor and the son of a maid; Mrs Ayres is the owner of Hundreds Hall, a once-grand manor now in shambles; her two children are Caroline and Roderick, whose leg was damaged in the war. Strange things start happening in the house, with no explanation, and Dr Faraday, the gallant narrator, relays the story to us through his eyes. He begins treating Roderick using induction coils, but quickly integrates himself into the Ayres household, and consequently shares in their various misfortunes.

Unfortunately, I was dissapointed with this novel. While it's gotten great reviews and it's certainly worth a read, I didn't think that it was up to the standards of or Waters' other novels. It may be that it's a little bit creepy, but I also felt that some of the suspense-building in the middle section was a little bit too much, and then when it did speed up near the end, the action seemed to be going too quickly and even wildly. The Little Stranger is by no means a long and tedious novel, but I felt it might have been better if the middle was made shorter and the last part made longer.

As said before, however, this novel is worth a read, especially if you liked Sarah Waters' writing style as seen in her Victorian trilogy. But I don't see it as Man Booker material, if only because I enjoyed Fingersmith so much more.