Okay so the writing was lovely and there were lots of sweet and funny moments (the Confutatis in the toilet made me laugh a lot). Unfortunately, in trying to make the two main characters incredibly intelligent, Barbery managed to make them both into exactly the same pretentious and breathtakingly arrogant hypocritical snob. It especially irritated me that they seemed to be looking down on everyone else for thinking that having read 'hard' books made them smart, whilst doing exactly the same thing themselves! I related to Paloma a lot but I don't think that's much of a commendation given that I too am a pretentious snob.

It was also quite boring - nothing happened in the first 130 pages, apart from discovering Paloma's plan to kill herself and set fire to her apartment... But that's in the blurb! The whole book was littered with long passages of 'profound' philosophical musings and meditations on art etc., most of which I thought were dull, self-congratulatory drivel. There did seem to be the beginnings of some self-awareness towards the end of the book but generally I got the impression that we were supposed to admire these characters, and that basically made it impossible for me to respect this book. I will admit though that the fact that nothing really happened meant I did not see the ending coming AT ALL.