Review by New York Times Review
MURIEL BARBERY'S PREVIOUS novels, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" and "Gourmet Rhapsody," took place in the same Paris apartment building. Her latest departs from both that locale and the quotidian world. Set in Burgundy, Italy and a magical place called the Pavilion of the Mists, "The Life of Elves" follows two girls of otherworldly provenance - Clara, the daughter of a human and her elfin lover, and Maria, an elf child who fully resembles a human being - born just as an evil leader is about to unleash his destructive powers. Clara, a piano prodigy, studies music and clairvoyance in Rome with Maestro Gustavo Acciavatti, an elf who has crossed to the human realm. Maria, living on a farm in France, must use her ability to communicate with nature to bridge the human and elfin worlds. Together (or so the Inner Elfin Council believes) these two can bring about the revival of elfin power, "the rebirth of the mists," and effect "the last alliance," a fruitful collaboration between nature's magic and human art. Barbery revels in the lavishing of detail. Maria has "eyes like two sparkling obsidians; olive, almost swarthy skin; high Slavic-looking cheekbones flushed with a round rosiness . . . lips, edged with a curl, the color of fresh blood." And the novel's meals rival anything in "Babette's Feast": "The dinner consisted of a truffled guinea-fowl set amid a liver terrine, and pot-au-feu en ravigote (all of it garnished with cardoons that had been so well caramelized that the juice still ran down one's throat, despite the vin de côte)." Needless to say, "it was a dazzling triumph." Such rhapsodies are the novel's great strength. Obscurity may be its downfall, in both individual sentences and as a whole. Despite Alison Anderson's skillful translation, Barbery's images can unspool into incomprehensible abstraction: "But while the Maestro radiated an aura of rocks and riverbanks, the Governor rose up in an arrow, whose clear fletchings turned into charred feathers at their extremities, and in his heart there was a distortion that distanced him from himself and resembled an open wound where once there had been magnificence." Perhaps Barbery wishes to engage the reader in a mystery. But this particular reader would prefer to tackle the mystery of how these nonhuman characters inhabit their world, rather than parse unnecessarily abstract sentences. At times, it's simply hard to know what's going on. In a battle scene, Maria's family and neighbors seem to be fighting a spiritual menace: "Truth be told, there were no mounts. The horsemen were straddling a void, and if all those brave souls had had the slightest knowledge of physics, they would have realized they were in the impossible presence of a source of antimatter that reversed the mechanisms of the known world." But some of these characters seem to be killed by actual guns. Readers may feel confused when a real soldier is shot by a metaphorical arrow. Likewise, it's hard to determine the novel's time frame. Maria's world, full of "bodices" and "petticoats," seems part of the 19th century, yet the local women have lost sons and brothers in two major wars, which would move the story forward, perhaps to the 1950s. Of course, novels needn't be rooted in a specific time and place, but Barbery's conflicting hints may distract readers from more important considerations. As often as "The Life of Elves" confounds, in its many moments of weird lucidity it also beguiles. It's then that Barbery explores the mystical connections between nature, art and the human heart with vividness and clarity.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 28, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
An orphan girl is left on the steps of a farmhouse late one snowy night. Raised in the French countryside by a loving family, she finds she has a strong, even magical, affinity with the natural world around her. One border over, in a rural mountain town in Italy, another orphan girl is raised by a priest and his housekeeper. When it is found that she has a seemingly supernatural gift for the piano, she is sent to Rome for further training. There she is trained by a maestro in both the musical and the magical arts. Countries apart, the two girls are connected in a way few understand, but as the evil force of war approaches, their birthright and the link between them grow increasingly important. Vivid imagery and a thread of mystery draw readers into the timeless and ethereal world of these young girls with a destiny to fulfill. Passionate and lyrical, the newest novel from internationally best-selling Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog, 2008) is a richly imagined tale full of enchanting characters whom readers will love.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In an unnamed year, France and Italy are home to small groups of elves living precariously among dangerous humans. Two young girls can bridge the gap between human and elven cultures and save the elves, but only if they survive a story whose urgency doesn't match its pace. Anderson captures the rich, beautiful language of Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody), such as "the noble dust of cellars" and "childhood is the dream that allows us to understand what we do not yet know." Despite elven politics, Christianity, and war, the plot feels secondary and downplayed. Distant narration, exemplified by an entire chapter without dialogue and phrases like "It must be told what this child was," draw attention to the words, not the characters. Just as battle is coming, readers are stopped by descriptions of the numerous participants, breaking the tension and typifying a reading experience in which the parts are greater than the whole. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Barbery follows up The Elegance of the Hedgehog, an international phenomenon, with a gauzy, glimmering fantasy that has also drawn worldwide acclaim. Cutting across a meadow, a little girl named Maria senses a presence and, as snow begins falling, is led into the forest by a creature that blends attributes of horse, man, and wild boar and ends up with four old women in an isolated village in Burgundy. High in the mountains in Abruzzo, young Clara, who lives with a country priest and his illiterate housekeeper, demonstrates such a profound, almost mystical capacity for music that she is sent to Rome to study. In fact, these two gifted girls will soon be communing with a world beyond ours as they help fight a battle against the darkness. VERDICT The magical frame and lush loveliness of the writing might be oversweet for some readers, but many fans of both Barbery and fantasy from writers like Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen will be enchanted. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The conjoined powers of two magical children bring about a new alliance to thwart evil and unite the natural world in this fantastical novel from a bestselling French writer. Seven years after the publication of her surprise international hit, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008), Barbery returns with something completely different: a fairy story of parallel but connected human and elf worlds and of dark forces and extraordinary goodness clashing in an age-old battle. Neither exactly pantheistic nor biblical, the novel expresses a spirituality rooted in art, nature, and, above all, love. Its heroines are Maria and Clara, the former born of elf parents but perfectly human in appearance, the latter half human, half elf. Their gifts, even at age 12, are prodigious. Maria's powers are elemental and growing, Clara's derive from music, but their abilities reach far wider and form a bulwark against the overwhelming evil led by a seductive entity named Aelius. Barbery's rhapsodic descriptions of the Burgundy landscape and peasantry, wildlife and creativity are eclipsed by more visionary and mystical scenarios studded with lambent imagery: a red bridge, an iris, a path of stones. Intense and impassioned but also fitfully obscure, distracted by tangents, and teasingly incomplete (especially when it comes to those dark forces), the novel can both enchant and confound. There are echoes of Milton, Tolkien, and Rowling, especially in the epic attack that suddenly pits Maria, her family, and community against the unearthly powers of a "storm-clad devil." While the Elfin Council watches, Maria and Clara fight the first battle in a war that may be part historical and part ecological and which concludes, at least for the elves, on a sober yet optimistic note. Although possibly too abstract for children and too fey for some adults, this fervent, idiosyncratic fable is undeniable evidence of a richly lyrical imagination. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
