Bird Brains discussion

The story starts out with one of the two protagonist, Paloma, deciding that she will commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. Her reason is to avoid the "fishbowl" syndrome.
By her own admission, she is intelligent. She is the representative of all real intelligence, as it gets sullied with age. Therefore, following Logic, she traverses through the Enlightened mind, which first worshipped man, and now that Paloma has evolved past this, she sees all of life as folly and opts out. As the book states, "Living, eating, reproducing, fulfilling the the task for the task for which you were born, and dying: it has no meaning, true, but that's the way things are."
On the other side of the intelligence world we have Paloma's sister, Colombe. She is one of many match-stick characters. To understand her we must understand that the author is a professor of Philosophy. Colombe becomes the student that professor Barbery has come to despise. We are told that the intellectuals are just showing off. The author flatters the reader by reassuring them that untutored instinct is truer than the opinions of the so-called experts. This is demonstrated through Renee and her reaction to Colombe's thesis paper. It is this concierge who assures us that "it is what you are doing the moment you die" that counts, as if everything leading up to that eventual moment has no meaning.
The author makes fun of the rich. Her truest moment in the whole book comes through Renee's rant over the misplaced comma. We are told, "To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die." This proposition would make an excellent term paper. Maybe one the professor has already assigned. Renee continues, "Language is a beautiful gift and its usage, an elaboration of community and society, is a sacred work." Not a hard concept to pass to a group of readers.
The rich and the intelligent are not the author's only target. Like a good French citizen, Barbery is able to slip in an attack on Islam. "Our history teacher, Monsieur Lermit, has us hooked by the end of the second class by showing us photos of these guys who'd had their hands or their lips cut off under Sharia Law, because they'd been stealing or smoking. But he didn't do it as if he were showing us a gory film or something. It was enthralling, and we listened attentively throughout the class, the part of which was to warn us against the foolishness of mankind, not Islam specifically." If this is true, then why not use the French Revolution as an example of foolishness. Perhaps the two secular world wars. Perhaps it is because Islam offends her feminism, ignoring the fact that it is life and liberty France which denies education to Muslim girls.
All in all, the book is nothing more than Philosophy and Sociology for beginners. A few intriguing points made by characters that are never fully developed. Skip the flattering of the sans-culottes and read Comte.

wow Bri that was deep...I'm still not a fan of the book..but will push to finish it.

I do feel this book had somewhat of a good "plot" but I enjoy reading to help take my mind off life and I had a hard time doing that with this book. It is a difficult read with in my opinion characters that don't really develop except maybe inside themselves. It amazes me how a "poor" concierge and a "smarter than normal" 11 year old are just as if not more stuck up as the people they complain about. If you like deep books than this one is for you but again a little to deep for me.

This book hurt.