Many are the examples of authors touched by the gift of opportunity to make one of their works a resounding bestseller that takes them headlong into the literary market with that band that confers the best of successes, that of word of mouth.
I remember cases like those of Eloy Moreno with your green gel pen, or John boyne with her boy in the striped pajamas ... In the case of Muriel barbery, his well-known "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" had that same effect of attraction for millions of readers for its originality.
The question is to be able to stay afterwards. And the truth is that once Muriel Barbery dedicates herself entirely to literature, it is evident that the thing has borne fruit in new stories that continue to find replication in readers already accustomed to the name of the author as a novelty always to be considered.
Top 3 recommended novels by Muriel Barbery
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery is undoubtedly a fantastic character writer. In this novel, the ability to present the edges of its protagonists, the blind spots in which they hide from their own existence, stands out greatly.
But its essential contradictions are also masterfully outlined, those that push life and light despite the rational determination to assume perdition or succumb to discouragement. But to get to all those vital sensations of some captivating characters, the author proposes a simple plot, a staging of the everyday that accompanies the plot with that charm of the delicate, of the magic of waking up every day being that authentic self between the general masquerade of any city.
At number 7 rue Grenelle, a bourgeois building in Paris, nothing is what it seems. Two of its inhabitants hide a secret. Renée, the caretaker, has been pretending to be an ordinary woman for a long time. Paloma is twelve years old and hides an extraordinary intelligence. Both lead a lonely life, as they strive to survive and overcome despair. The arrival of a mysterious man to the building will lead to the meeting of these two soulmates. Together, Renée and Paloma will discover the beauty of the little things. They will invoke the magic of fleeting pleasures and invent a better world. The Elegance of the Hedgehog It is a small treasure that reveals how to achieve happiness thanks to friendship, love and art. While we turn the pages with a smile, the voices of Renée and Paloma weave, with a melodious language, a captivating hymn to life.
The life of the elves
The fantastic is spread throughout much of Barbery's work with that allegorical intention of any unusual complement that is inserted in a very real setting.
Thus, the whole is not broken but serves a theatrical life, an Alice complex that evokes our vast imaginary world, our always subjective notion of things. What do little Maria, who lives in a remote village in Burgundy, have in common and Clara, another girl who, at the same time, after having grown up in Abruzzo, is sent to Rome to develop her prodigious gift for music?
Very little, apparently. However, there is a secret bond between them: each one, by very different means, is in contact with the world of the elves, a world of art, invention and mystery, and also of fusion with nature, which gives life of men its depth and beauty. A great threat, coming from a lost elf, weighs on the human species, and only Maria and Clara are able, through their combined gifts, to disrupt their plans. In The Life of the Elves, Muriel Barbery creates a poetic and disturbing universe, deeply enchanted, that draws from the world of tales and the marvelous to offer us an extremely original novel.
A strange country
The greatest of contrasts, war and imagination, the prosaic effort to destroy the human being and the brilliant ability to create new worlds, as a legacy of God himself wasted and turned into a strange condemnation.
Alejandro de Yepes and Jesús Rocamora, two young officers of the Spanish regular army, face the sixth year of the bloodiest war that human beings have ever known. The day they meet the affable and eccentric Petrus, an extraordinary adventure begins as the two Spaniards leave their post and cross an invisible bridge: Petrus is an elf, he comes from the secret world of Mists in which a company is already gathered. of elves, women and men on which the fate of the war will depend.
Alejandro and Jesús will discover the land of their new companion, a land of natural harmony, beauty and poetry, but one that also faces conflict and decline. Together they will participate in the last battle and their worlds, as they have known them, will never be the same again.
