The Elegance of the Hedgehog Objects and Places of Importance

Objects/Places
Plants
Solange Josse seems to take better care of her plants than she does her own children,
spending a great deal of time each day watering and speaking to the plants.

Sleeping Pills
Paloma steals one of her mother's sleeping pills each night and hides them so that she
might use them to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday.

Beige Dress
Manuela borrows a beige dress from her neighbor and friend, a dressmaker, for Renee
to wear to her first dinner date with Kakuro. The dress belongs to a client who died and
Renee is later told she can keep it. However, Renee exchanges it with a purple one
when she goes to the dry cleaner to pick it up.

Columbe's Master's Thesis
Renee reads an early draft of Columbe's Master's Thesis and finds it wanting. Renee
feels that intellectuals should use their education to make the world better, but this is not
what Columbe is doing with her thesis.

Journals
Paloma makes observations and writes down profound thoughts in two journals to
chronicle the months up to her suicide.

Husserl
Renee attempts to read a book by Husserl about phenomenology, but finds it to be a
whole lot of nonsense and puts it aside.
Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a novel by Leo Tolstoy. Renee considers this novel one of her
favorites and it is a quote from this novel that causes Kakuro Ozu to figure out Renee's
secret on their first meeting.

Ozu Movies  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasujir%C5%8D_Ozu
Renee has recently discovered movies by a Japanese filmmaker named Ozu that she
feels are full of great metaphor. It turns out Kakuro Ozu is a distant relative of the
filmmaker.

Elevator
Paloma meets Kakuro on the elevator when it becomes stuck after someone forgot to
close the gate on an upper floor. This leads to a good friendship between these two
when Kakuro learns of Paloma's interest in Japanese culture.

Renee's Loge
Renee lives in a loge at number 7, rue de Grenelle that comes with her job. Renee often
leaves the television on in her loge to confirm the preconceptions of the tenants even
though she does not watch regular television.

Number 7, rue de Grenelle
Number 7, rue de Grenelle is where the novel takes place. This is an apartment building
in France that caters to wealthy tenants.