In the age of social media we think we know each other, but do we really? Muriel Barbery’s second novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, became an international sensation through word-of-mouth recommendations. It told the story of an unlikely friendship of an unhappy teenage girl and the determinedly ordinary, middle-aged concierge in a Parisian apartment building – whose lives were richer than they first appear. With her next novel, The Life of Elves now published nine years later, secret lives are again uncovered, this time focusing on the tale of two young girls and the secret world of elves that they discover.