Cherie and The Last of Cherie (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

In the United States most people might know the author Colette through the musical Gigi based on a story she wrote, which was filmed as a musical directed by Vincente Minnelli. This pair of novels is not that, although it is also set in the same kind of demimonde French society at the turn of the 20th century. In her native France Colette is well known as a recipient of the of the prestigious Prix Goncourt and the Legion of Honor, a peer of her contemporary writer Marcel Proust. In the two forwards to this audiobook we learn about how difficult it is for the English reader to get an accurate sense of what it is like to read her writing in previous translations. The present translation by Rachel Careau preserves the syntactic innovations Colette introduced as much as possible, a kind of a punchy stripping down of the language by eliminating unnecessary words. In the audiobook you can really sense the tension this gives some of the dialogue and narration in this book.

The two novels are basically centered upon the character of a young, wealthy man nicknamed by the title of the first novel who started his life as a young gigolo in a six-year relationship with a courtesan twice his age named Léa. The first novel centers mainly on Léa's point of view although Colette is by no means strict about staying within one character's skull. The topic of sex is not shied away from as you would expect in about with courtesans and gigolos and affairs.

By the second novel, published some six years after the first one, we jump forward a decade to when the two of them have separated Chéri having settled into marriage after having been mobilized for the First World War. We find out that Léa is now a woman well along in years, overweight and showing her age. And there are the passages which luxuriate in the description of beauty both masculine and feminine. One of the key things that led Léa to take in a Chéri as a lover was his extraordinary physical beauty. He was a boy toy you might say by the standards of those days, a youth who knew little of the world and yet a delight for her to have around. The inciting event in the first novel is the announcement of Chéri's marriage to a wealthy society woman by the name of Edmée. It was a practical way to maintain his lifestyle yet his forced separation from Léa as a result took a heavy toll on them both. By the end of that book the two of them began to recognize that their relationship was no passing fling but precisely one of love, unequaled by any other in their lives, forever gone. The scene where the two of them have, starting out as a relatively light and frivolous discussion, only gradually coming to this deeper realization is crafted beautifully.

In a second book we start out seeing a glimpse into the someone distant marriage between Edmée and Chéri after World War I. Society's changed since the early years of the turn of the 20th century and Edmée has a position of responsibility in a hospital for the war wounded. Chéri's mother, herself a former courtesan, occupies much of her time in financial speculation, something new as a result of the absence of men during the war. Léa's name comes up by chance it seems in a conversation and this impels Chéri to look up his old mistress. The scene where he arrives at her apartment after a number of years absence to find her old and a great deal stouter is a kind of amazing. You can tell that the large degree play has moved on much more than Chéri and he finds something break inside him when he realizes that the special relationship they had is something that could never return for him. The devastation of his world completely changed is revealed in little bits at the end of the novel which I will not spoil here. All through these two novels there are these dazzling turns of phrase which remind me of what was said at the outset about Colette's use of language. She had true mastery of how to turn a phrase so that it could be cutting, or ambiguous in precisely a teasing and yet not provoking way, or hint at some character's action that's about to happen. Many times I noticed these touches in some bit of interior reverie or sometimes in a description of a scene, or of some characters appearance or a character, in instances of telling instead of showing. I cannot think of many instances where they came up in the course of some action or gesture the characters performed. They were really subverting the injunction to writers to show and not tell, but if you pay attention to these breathtaking passages, you find that that rule should not be taken as absolute.

The kind of person who might like these novels is one who does not require their fictional content to have plenty of action or snappy dialogue. There are long stretches where you just have two persons conversing in a room, or description of a woman changing clothes perhaps, or someone just thinking about someone else they know. I see in other people's reviews that some people find these books boring and I understand that. But for a reader who allows themselves to be seduced by the heady atmosphere of the early years of the 20th century in France and and wallow in the beauty of the words assembled on the page it's really a splendid experience. The characters in these books situate themselves beyond religion and beyond traditional morality. But if you take a bigger view of the entire arc of Chéri's story you see that the author wrestles with ideas about a new morality: who is it right to enter into relationship from? and what can one person expect from another to whom they consider themselves bound? There's vice in this book, but there is also an exhilarating view of characters working out what matters to themselves and what matters in life. The narration of this translation of Colette's work felt like a warm caress to my ear. This is one of the reasons I give this book the highest of recommendations.