Life of Elves

Sadly, this book did not live up to expectation. The opening chapters showing the placement of two young girl babies in nurturing and safe communities flowed well. I was full of admiration for the translator. It cannot have been an easy job for her but the prose had real richness and was without the jarring of some translations. The story progressed and my struggle began. This genre would not normally be my choice and I finished the book only by skipping more text than I read. The further the story rambled on the more my concentration waned. The conclusion (was it?) I felt rushed and weak. Would not recommend?

Thanks to Gallic books for our copies of The Life of Elves

I think you have to through yourself into this novel and forget what Muriel Barbary has written previously.
The cover like the prose is beautiful, sometimes confusing but this makes the reader work harder.
Beautiful, poetic and thought provoking.

Everything about this book - its title, its cover, its author's other novel suggested that we would love this book.....what a disappointment then! All of us from Good Food, Good Wine, Good Books who read this book felt that by doing so we had lost valuable hours of our lives that we would never get back! We were all excited to read the novel, we were looking forward to the fantastical elements of the book and the thought of a novel with two female protagonists. However without exception we all felt that the writing was confusing and laboured, that quite often the story didn't make sense (or we had missed the sense of it), that there were many characters that we didn't feel we actually got to know and that the novel took far too long to get to any sense of a story. By the end of the book the majority of us felt that we were no wiser about what had actually happened than when we had begun!! As a book club we don't expect to all enjoy (or even understand) every novel that we read, however our dislike for this novel certainly united us all for once!

I had high hopes for this book, having heard wonderful things about The Elegance of the Hedgehog by the same author, although I hadn’t actually read it. To be honest, it is now unlikely that I will read it. The Life of Elves was just way too fanciful for me and most of the time I was more bemused than beguiled.

The book is about two girls, both foundlings who, although not known to each other, are united by a common destiny.

Whilst I readily concede that fantasy is not one of my favourite genres, this book was so totally immersed in a world of dreams and magic that it took fantasy to a new level. For me it was both unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory and I struggled with it. The style of writing is consistent with the content, reinforcing a very illusory world with prose that is very flowery. To be honest, I was completely lost at the beginning and thought I was going to have to give up. I ploughed on and eventually got to the point where I just went with the flow for the sake of reaching the end. That helped somewhat, as did the fact that some sort of story began to emerge as the book progressed, although it wasn’t one that I cared very much about. It was however, what elevated the book to the dizzy heights of a second star (just).

I did quite enjoy the descriptions of life in the two rural villages where the girls grew up. The very genuine country folk had a unique relationship with the environment in which they lived and on which their livelihood depended and this was portrayed well by the author.

Overall verdict? Just too mystical and dream-like for me. Possibly a failing on my part rather than that of the author, but I can’t really bring myself to recommend it. If fantasy is your genre, then you may enjoy it but I personally think it is too abstract to be described as good.

'Long-winded and Going Nowhere'

The Macclesfield Library Book group received this book for free as part of a reading agency offer. Sadly the group did not enjoy the book and only one person finished it!

We were all very disappointed as a few of us had read and enjoyed 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' - we felt that 'The Life of Elves' was very confusing and lacking in plot. It was very over-written and extremely flowery in it's language.

We weren't sure whether it was the translation that had rendered this book un-readable or if it had been written that way.

The only positive we could take from it was that at times it was very poetic.

This wasn't my usual book id pick up. However a free give away our book group had copies. I actually enjoyed the world of elves and fantasy setting. I did find I got distracted by the unusual vocabulary words I thought made up! Actually in the dictionary. . I had to stop myself from lingering on these strange terms and concentrate upon the story.
I did feel possibly as it was translated to English it lost a little of its meaning.
I wished it had been a little longer. I loved the cover btw.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Elegance of the Hedgehog and was looking forward to reading another of Muriel Barbery's novels. I was so disappointed. The subject matter - fantasy, magic, elves - does not normally appeal to me but I approached it with an open mind. However I found this baffling, confusing and difficult to follow with so many obscure characters, over the top descriptions and complicated storyline. It was such a chore to read. "Fantastical wild beasts and mercurial horses" would not induce me to read a possible sequel.

I liked The Elegance of the hedgehog so I was pleased to see another Barbery book. What a disappointment! It was short and I couldn't understand the story.

Oh dear. Almost to a man those of us in Paperback Readers found this a challenging read. I now give you some of our thoughts:-
TM said 'I found it hard to get any sense of connection to this story and kept repeating sections. Obviously the title alerts you to the fact that the content relates to magic/mystery,but it is repetitive in telling you about the girls being in possession of magical powers. The constant reference to dreams and revelations did not seem necessary.
The pace of the book is slow, the use of language is "fluffy" for lack of a better word and it's seemingly only used fill out the story.'
JM said 'this is nothing like I've ever read before and I'm glad I read it but I did find it hard going although I normally quite enjoy magical stories. It was strangely beautiful though.'
LM said 'I struggled with 'the life of elves'. I didn't even want to finish it, was ok to begin with but had to force myself to pick it up and read on.'
JK simply couldn't finish it, even though she tried twice.
As for me, I thought the language and description was quite fantastic to begin with but in the end it overwhelmed the rather feeble plot and simply drowned it. However one of us enjoyed it!
HM said 'Even though this is not a book I would've picked off the shelf I found myself quickly drawn in. The author writes in a beautiful style, she pulls you into the lives of her fantasy folk and allows you to languish in this tapestry of words, weaving the lives of humans and Elves together. It is a story of good versus evil, priests, church & faith. Almost Frank Perretti in style in parts. At times one can almost smell the aroma of peasant French cuisine.
Nearing the end there's a battle raging between the would be destroyer of the world and the mists of warrior elves........the ending, well that would be telling. I'm just going to say pick up the book and discover for yourselves!'

I like to be able to engage with a book, identify and take a real interest in the characters and empathise in their trials and tribulations. I started this book with the intention of finishing it, but was never drawn into the story. I tried reading for a sustained period to get into it, but only became more and more disillusioned.

It wasn't only the magic, elves and other- worldliness that put me off: I've read that sort of stuff before and coped, although I've never been much of a fan. It was just a feeling that this was pretentious twaddle masquerading as something clever that finally got to me.
Had the story just been based on the two little girls without the magical elements it would have been readable for me. With the added fantasies I decided life is too short to waste reading drivel and gave up just after the half way point, at yet another elfin council.

Had I looked at the plaudits and noticed praise for only one of her three books (not this one by the way) I'd probably only have lasted 50 pages.

I personally wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
Richard P.

Probably the only way to enjoy this book is to let go and float like a leaf on the surface of the prose.
It is a book about other worlds and other worldly creatures. The language is more poetry than prose in that it deals in imagery and metaphor and the power of stories to communicate meaning. Barbery writes ‘In reality there is only fiction’.

The heroines of this fiction are two young girls who are acknowledged by all who know them to possess great power and purity of intention, Barbery describes childhood as, “the dream that allows us to understand what we do not yet know”
Sue F.

Muriel Barbery has a poetic, lyrical style that washes over the reader. Long sentences full of description but so complicated that they lose meaning.

The idea of the two young girls growing up in different settings was interesting but never really explained. There was a war with Art and Nature on one side and evil on the other.

But who or what was the Evil and why did they attack Marie and her village? Marie didn't appear to know the enemy nor Clare understand how she was to help her.

Scenes were described in detail but then lost behind mists and the mystery became so intangible that I lost interest. I completed the book in the hope that I might understand more but I didn't.
Anne P.

There's no Reading Group meeting until September. Who describes uneventful months as being "as flat as a loaf without yeast"? ...

Muriel Berbery in The Life Of Elves, springs surprises in prose on every page... a celebration of language, translated from the French with obvious empathy by Alison Anderson. An Italian dictionary "brightens the clerical austerity" of a priest's tired old desk blotter, and helps him read an Italian poem. No matter how he pronounces the Italian, his mouth fills with "the same taste of clear water and moist violets", and he sees "cheerful rippling on the surface of a green lake".

The characters and plot ...(plot??)... of this remarkable book need some mental agility; it can be read in awestruck gulps, or discreet nibbles, and one reading is not enough. It is the reader who has to be open to the book, to belong to it somehow, to care about Maria and Clara and those they will inspire. The reader may hear a mean, hypercritical voice muttering 'pretentious indulgence', among other voices saying 'sensational'. It isn't pretentious to ask sometimes "why is humanity around?" even if answers can be only guesswork. This is serious comedy, a challenge not to be denied, yeast in the flat loaf!
Freda k.