It’s been awhile since a novel has touched me deeply,  inspired me to look at life (and death), art and beauty in a new light… and actually moved me to take action in my own life. But that’s what happened when I read “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” a brilliant book by a French philosophy professor, which delivers far more truth than fiction.

It’s a series of eloquent little essays– on time, beauty and the meaning of life– delivered by two unlikely protagonists who live in a posh Parisian apartment block. Renee Michel is a 54 year-old frumpy concierge, who devours philosophy, music and art;  the other, Paloma, is a smart-ass, highly intelligent 12 year-old daughter of one of the tenants. Both are old souls and true intellectuals whose true talents and brilliance are disguised behind ordinary appearances.

They become friends and discover that intelligence and beauty can radiate from the most unexpected places, and people, when we look past the exterior and truly ‘see’ a person. As  Paloma says: ”Madame Michel has the elegance of a hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement of a hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creative, fiercely solitary–and terribly elegant.”

We all have our ‘quills,’ yet in today’s society so many people are readily dismissed before the beauty beneath has a chance to be revealed. That’s just one of the novel’s many insights. At one point Paloma is reflecting on life’s fragility and death’s inevitability and makes a new commitment:  ”I’m going to stop undoing, deconstructing, I’m going to start building. What matters is what you are doing when you die and… I want to be building.”

Well said.  I’ve decided from here on in my life I plan to be building. I am done with negativity, complaining and those who are always “deconstructing.”

And Renee, too, has something to teach us. At 54, after years of emotional solitary confinement, she had met someone and was prepared to love again. A good friend of mine was so moved by this that she decided, at age 58, to take a chance in her own life. Within days of reading the book, she went online, connected with a nice guy, and just returned from a weekend in Denver with who just might be the man of her dreams.  Fantastic.

Within life’s despair there are those moments of beauty, where time is no longer the same–what Paloma describes as “an always within never.”

I, like Paloma, am going to search for those moments of always within never, the unexpected beauty and wisdom in this world, even when it comes disguised as a hedgehog.

I highly recommend this powerful, elegant story that reminds us of what matters.