With the elegance of a hedgehog

My name is Renee. I'm fifty-four years old and I've been the concierge at number 7 on Grenelle Street for twenty-seven years. It is a nice private house with a yard and garden inside, which is divided into eight very luxurious apartments. They're all huge, and someone lives in each one. I'm small, ugly, fat widow, I have chicken eyes, and sometimes, when I'm having a rough morning, I'm wheezing like a mammoth. I fit exactly into what the general social consciousness has labeled the paradigm of a housekeeper, so no one would ever dream that I am more well-read and educated than all the wealthy residents of our house.

My name is Paloma, I'm twelve years old and I live in Paris in an expensive apartment at number 7, rue Grenelle. Despite all this luck and all this wealth, I've known long enough that the end station is still the fishbowl. And how do I know that? I'm actually quite intelligent. Exceptionally intelligent, even. That's why I made the decision. At the end of this school year, on my thirteenth birthday, June 16th to be exact, I will commit suicide.

Muriel Barbery writes about profound things with seductive lightness, using ironic language to tell a simple and moving story of meeting and passing, of blindness and seeing, of transience and eternity.