Fabulous English The Rainy Moon and Other Stories - filled with acute observation and descriptions as Colette casts herself, in the main, as witness and narrator to these stories of love, obsession and relationship. I love her writing and each of these short stories left me thoughtful. English Read so far:
*Bella-vista --
Gribiche --3
The rendezvous --
The patriarch --
*The rainy moon --
*The kepi --
*The tender shoot --
Green sealing-wax --
Armande --
*The sick child --
*The photographer's missus --
***
The little Bouilloux girl --3
*Clouk --
*Monsieur Maurice --
*April --
The secret woman --3
The other wife --2 English 3.5 stars. my favorites were bella-vista, the rainy moon, the kepi, and the sick child. English
The Rainy Moon and Other Stories
Even in this 1958 translation - Antonia White's is admirably seamless! - Colette's stories of a full-blooded, honest, undervalued woman's perspective on life in the years either side of the First World War are peerless in their depth & breadth.
Eleven stories...some with an autobiographical truth...cover a range of emotions from an acute & penetrating feminine viewpoint, though her male characters are well-drawn & credible too.
Colette captures human emotions almost perfectly, with her literary integrity seldom compromised by triteness or tired cliche...though many other lesser writers have copied her chic & lively style since her 1930s heyday. Colette herself drew inspiration & ideas from other writers, as most do...though few happily admit...& in this selection of her work between 1939 & 1945, she shows her skills had not faded, as she enjoyed her fame in the air of southern France, a comfort for her creeping arthritis! But her writing remained robust & vibrant; the last story in this collection 'The Photographer's Missus' - a tale of a reluctantly failed suicide of a worthy woman chafing at her domestic boredom in Paris - is a model of Colette's timeless talent to entertain & to enlighten her readers. English Overall, an exceptional book of short stories.
The Photographer's Missus: 5*
A final reckoning of a a very trivial life' when a bored housewife decides unsuccessfully to commit suicide & her realisation that this isn't the appropriate answer to her dis-ease.
Whenever I think of her, I always see her shored up by the sheer force of humble, everyday greatness; that unrecognized greatness she had misnamed 'a very trivial life'. English The Rainy Moon, And Other Stories is a phenomenal collection of experiences. Taking life and memories and decorating them with poetic prose is what creates neighborhood gossip into sparkling adventures. Colette offers up histories of herself and those around her to be thoroughly enjoyed. She offers in such a way that the reader is convinced that parts of the stories are something they too have lived through.
One could take a paragraph from this collection and it would stand alone as poetic prose. What is particularly admirable about Colette's work is the craft that went into. Although her stories are thick with philosophy, morals (without bias), poetic turns, allegory, metaphors and strong narrative voice, she writes so it is easy for the reader to digest, without losing in memorability of each piece.
A writers writer, but also an every-man's writer. Colette is fabulous. English I'm so very glad I came upon this little compilate of stories by Colette, lost in a pile of reduced books in the local charity shop for mere 50p!
My only previous knowledge, if you can even call it that, of anything relating to Colette was that film with Keira Knightley that was out a couple of years ago and I went to watch with friends who had a vague notion of who she was. Of course I was immediately curious about her, but somehow didn't pursue it any further.
Her style is so refreshing, something like talking to a friend who has a bit of a passion for arts and culture, but who's also very curious about people's little habits and the magic of extraordinary moments and events that sometimes get lost in ordinary daily life.
She did have quite a lot of freedom unlike most women of her time, but I don't even know if her ideas were ahead of time or if it's our time that's got a bit behind, you know? It certainly got me thinking about this cyclic tendency, or this anachronism if you will that can get particularly frustrating when you're in the middle of a pandemic with a fair amount of rage and anxiety keeping you company.
I would definitely like to have a night out with my friend Colette in the streets of Paris. English The more I read Colette the more I adore her. Her prose, perceptiveness, and evocative language (of flowers, rooms, people, things!) are unparalleled and a delight. Think I've read some of these stories before, but some are new and most are gems. English
