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jordantaylor's review against another edition
4.0
This is a combination of two individual books, which I will review here separately.
The first, "Chéri," introduces us to a stunningly beautiful, conceited young man named Frank Peloux, otherwise known as Chéri. At twenty-five years of age, he is having a love affair with the sophisticated Léa de Lonval, a courtesan twice his age. When Chéri must marry a young heiress, Léa reluctantly decides that they must end the relationship. Chéri pretends indifference, but finds himself haunted by the one person he has ever cared about - Léa.
Though the plot a bit was blurry, I found the characters complex and thought provoking. While I wouldn't consider the story as a whole exceedingly well written, the characters were realistic and interesting.
Chéri and Léa's relationship intrigued me. Why does Léa stay with the selfish, arrogant Chéri? Why does a young man who has every young beauty in Paris falling at his feet choose a woman in her late forties as his lover?
As someone in a relationship with someone more than twice my age, I always find age differences fascinating to read about when combined with romance.
Chéri, the main character, was someone who I found myself hating intensely and sympathizing with all at once. He is far from admirable, being far closer to evil. I was infuriated by his flippant arrogance, his self proclaimed malice and selfishness, and the way that he referred to his wife, Edmée.
Some of the things that he says so shamelessly are truly shocking. One of the first was early on the book, where he tells Léa about his fiancee: "Oh! She won't be allowed to have a say in anything. She's going to be my wife, isn't she? Let her kiss the sacred ground I tread on, and thank her lucky stars for the privilege. And that will be that."
Surely he is joking! However, as we read further into the story, we see that he was completely serious.
Among his other horrifying statements is that he actually wants Léa to mourn him and die of grief once they are parted.
He is honest, you have to give him that.
However, we see another side of this monster as well. We see that despite his pretense of being cold and unfeeling, he is truly in love with a woman who he cannot have. His fanatic longing and weary outlook on life is realistic, and sharply felt.
Chéri is a well written, complicated mix of hero and villain.
His lover Léa is mentioned constantly, though she is not physically present in very much of the story. She is a mature, sensible woman who took Chéri on as her last affair. And who better than a far younger man with the looks of a Greek god?
Léa is fashionable, she is sophisticated, she is regal. I pictured her a woman with an ageless sort of grace that is often more beautiful than a pretty face.
But, as with her young lover, there is another side to her as well.
It does not take the reader very long to figure out that Léa's staged attitude of wanting Chéri for his looks only are as false as Chéri's own indifference. She is just as in love with him as he is with her, and is almost surprised to find herself distraught enough to run away from Paris after his marriage.
Then there are other characters that are not quite as memorable, but still very well written. There is the beautiful young Edmée, who at first thinks herself lucky to be engaged to the gorgeous Chéri. But she is in fact destined to live an unhappy life with him as her spiteful husband. She was another interesting character - she hates Chéri, and yet she cannot help but love him as well. Her mother and Chéri's mother, Madame Charlotte Peloux, were also well written minor characters.
So, the character writing in this book was well done. I wish that the rest of the story had been so good!
But the plot was barely existent, and there were plenty of long discussions and portions of the book that were nearly completely pointless. Unless the characters were doing something in particular, it was pretty dull listening to them gossip and go through daily life.
Another thing that annoyed me was how Chéri's beauty was constantly being pointed out. I know that that was a large part of his character, but it was a bit aggravating to hear about his perfection from absolutely every character (even himself!). And how exactly can a man's knees be gorgeous?
This is an average book.
Now for the second volume here, "The Last of Chéri." This sequel opens with a changed Chéri. He is somewhere between five to ten years older, and in between the two books he was a soldier in the war, and has continued to live an unfulfilled life with his wife Edmée, whom he has never been able to love. He is very much sobered, not quite so carefree and arrogant. And yet, we still see some shocking behavior from him, such as his thoughts of striking Edmée for no apparent reason, or his vindictive dwelling on the knowledge that he knows how to hurt his wife mentally.
Chéri has attempted to forget about Léa, plainly because her memory is too painful, and he would have always wondered what could have been.
Edmée's character is more developed, thought the author never completely lets us into her head like we see into Chéri's. She became far more interesting though - and I was impressed by her. She has coped with her marriage by obeying everything her husband says meekly, while keeping her head and never allowing herself to sink into drama and despair. By the end, I couldn't decide between two possible characters for her. Was she a spineless, stupid girl too scared of her husband to do anything about the relationship? Or had she grown into a strong, enduring woman who was only trying to get through life the best way she knew how? I have a feeling that it was the second one.
And no, Léa is not gone from this book. Like in the first book, she is not physically present except for one scene, but through-out the story, we feel her overwhelming influence. Chéri goes to see her, after years of staying away. I found it a bit sad that he found her now truly old, no longer beautiful, and a dulled woman compared to the bright, sharp spirit she had once been. But, it was inevitable, as she is about sixty now, and has obviously changed in more than just appearance.
The underlying story that follows Chéri's visit was heartbreaking. He has gone through his marriage wishing that he were married to Léa, the love of his life, instead. But their love could never be. They have been born at the wrong times - she is now an old woman, and the Léa that he loves no longer exists.
I didn't like the sad ending, even though there really wouldn't be any other conclusion that would completely fit. It wasn't what I wanted to read right before I closed the book, but I'll admit that it did make sense.
A thoughtful, memorable story.
The first, "Chéri," introduces us to a stunningly beautiful, conceited young man named Frank Peloux, otherwise known as Chéri. At twenty-five years of age, he is having a love affair with the sophisticated Léa de Lonval, a courtesan twice his age. When Chéri must marry a young heiress, Léa reluctantly decides that they must end the relationship. Chéri pretends indifference, but finds himself haunted by the one person he has ever cared about - Léa.
Though the plot a bit was blurry, I found the characters complex and thought provoking. While I wouldn't consider the story as a whole exceedingly well written, the characters were realistic and interesting.
Chéri and Léa's relationship intrigued me. Why does Léa stay with the selfish, arrogant Chéri? Why does a young man who has every young beauty in Paris falling at his feet choose a woman in her late forties as his lover?
As someone in a relationship with someone more than twice my age, I always find age differences fascinating to read about when combined with romance.
Chéri, the main character, was someone who I found myself hating intensely and sympathizing with all at once. He is far from admirable, being far closer to evil. I was infuriated by his flippant arrogance, his self proclaimed malice and selfishness, and the way that he referred to his wife, Edmée.
Some of the things that he says so shamelessly are truly shocking. One of the first was early on the book, where he tells Léa about his fiancee: "Oh! She won't be allowed to have a say in anything. She's going to be my wife, isn't she? Let her kiss the sacred ground I tread on, and thank her lucky stars for the privilege. And that will be that."
Surely he is joking! However, as we read further into the story, we see that he was completely serious.
Among his other horrifying statements is that he actually wants Léa to mourn him and die of grief once they are parted.
He is honest, you have to give him that.
However, we see another side of this monster as well. We see that despite his pretense of being cold and unfeeling, he is truly in love with a woman who he cannot have. His fanatic longing and weary outlook on life is realistic, and sharply felt.
Chéri is a well written, complicated mix of hero and villain.
His lover Léa is mentioned constantly, though she is not physically present in very much of the story. She is a mature, sensible woman who took Chéri on as her last affair. And who better than a far younger man with the looks of a Greek god?
Léa is fashionable, she is sophisticated, she is regal. I pictured her a woman with an ageless sort of grace that is often more beautiful than a pretty face.
But, as with her young lover, there is another side to her as well.
It does not take the reader very long to figure out that Léa's staged attitude of wanting Chéri for his looks only are as false as Chéri's own indifference. She is just as in love with him as he is with her, and is almost surprised to find herself distraught enough to run away from Paris after his marriage.
Then there are other characters that are not quite as memorable, but still very well written. There is the beautiful young Edmée, who at first thinks herself lucky to be engaged to the gorgeous Chéri. But she is in fact destined to live an unhappy life with him as her spiteful husband. She was another interesting character - she hates Chéri, and yet she cannot help but love him as well. Her mother and Chéri's mother, Madame Charlotte Peloux, were also well written minor characters.
So, the character writing in this book was well done. I wish that the rest of the story had been so good!
But the plot was barely existent, and there were plenty of long discussions and portions of the book that were nearly completely pointless. Unless the characters were doing something in particular, it was pretty dull listening to them gossip and go through daily life.
Another thing that annoyed me was how Chéri's beauty was constantly being pointed out. I know that that was a large part of his character, but it was a bit aggravating to hear about his perfection from absolutely every character (even himself!). And how exactly can a man's knees be gorgeous?
This is an average book.
Now for the second volume here, "The Last of Chéri." This sequel opens with a changed Chéri. He is somewhere between five to ten years older, and in between the two books he was a soldier in the war, and has continued to live an unfulfilled life with his wife Edmée, whom he has never been able to love. He is very much sobered, not quite so carefree and arrogant. And yet, we still see some shocking behavior from him, such as his thoughts of striking Edmée for no apparent reason, or his vindictive dwelling on the knowledge that he knows how to hurt his wife mentally.
Chéri has attempted to forget about Léa, plainly because her memory is too painful, and he would have always wondered what could have been.
Edmée's character is more developed, thought the author never completely lets us into her head like we see into Chéri's. She became far more interesting though - and I was impressed by her. She has coped with her marriage by obeying everything her husband says meekly, while keeping her head and never allowing herself to sink into drama and despair. By the end, I couldn't decide between two possible characters for her. Was she a spineless, stupid girl too scared of her husband to do anything about the relationship? Or had she grown into a strong, enduring woman who was only trying to get through life the best way she knew how? I have a feeling that it was the second one.
And no, Léa is not gone from this book. Like in the first book, she is not physically present except for one scene, but through-out the story, we feel her overwhelming influence. Chéri goes to see her, after years of staying away. I found it a bit sad that he found her now truly old, no longer beautiful, and a dulled woman compared to the bright, sharp spirit she had once been. But, it was inevitable, as she is about sixty now, and has obviously changed in more than just appearance.
The underlying story that follows Chéri's visit was heartbreaking. He has gone through his marriage wishing that he were married to Léa, the love of his life, instead. But their love could never be. They have been born at the wrong times - she is now an old woman, and the Léa that he loves no longer exists.
I didn't like the sad ending, even though there really wouldn't be any other conclusion that would completely fit. It wasn't what I wanted to read right before I closed the book, but I'll admit that it did make sense.
A thoughtful, memorable story.
rebecca_dt's review
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
kiromii's review against another edition
Only read Cheri, did not read Last of Cheri
sadie_slater's review against another edition
I'd never read any of Colette's novels, and after seeing the Keira Knightley biopic recently I thought I should rectify that and borrowed a friend's one-volume edition of Chéri and The Last of Chéri.
I was surprised how short each one was; both together come to just under 300 pages, so they're really novellas rather than full-length novels. Chéri, first published in 1920, is set in 1912 and tells the story of the relationship between a young man (the eponymous Chéri) and the ageing courtesan Léa de Lonval; The Last of Chéri is set in 1919, and deals with Chéri's struggles to adapt to life in a changed post-war world.
I have to confess that I wasn't particularly enamoured of these. That may have been partly the translation, which rendered the two novellas into sometimes beautiful but very florid and occasionally slightly cloying prose, but it was more that I really struggled to understand the characters' motivations and feelings, and to care much about what happened to them. I don't know whether this was due to the 1950s translation being overly coy about sex, or to the elliptical nature of Colette's original narrative, or if I was running up against the same problem I have found when I've tried to read romance in the past, which is just that what's being described is so far from anything I've ever experienced that I find it utterly incomprehensible on an emotional level. Chéri himself is also not a particularly sympathetic character; he came across as a petulant man-child who seemed to expect that everything would be done for him by someone else, and his melancholy felt more like a spoiled child's tantrums than real emotion. I did like the coterie of bickering middle-aged courtesans among whom Chéri has been brought up, particularly in The Last of Chéri when the war seems to have lent all the women more power and self-determination (one of the many things that Chéri seems unable to deal with), and at one point I wondered if it was meant to be a gender-flip with Chéri as a male version of the ingénue surrounded by powerful men, but really, it was a slog to finish this and I'm still not actually sure I managed to understand it at all. (I'm not giving this a star rating, because I think my reaction probably has very little to do with the book's actual literary merit.)
I was surprised how short each one was; both together come to just under 300 pages, so they're really novellas rather than full-length novels. Chéri, first published in 1920, is set in 1912 and tells the story of the relationship between a young man (the eponymous Chéri) and the ageing courtesan Léa de Lonval; The Last of Chéri is set in 1919, and deals with Chéri's struggles to adapt to life in a changed post-war world.
I have to confess that I wasn't particularly enamoured of these. That may have been partly the translation, which rendered the two novellas into sometimes beautiful but very florid and occasionally slightly cloying prose, but it was more that I really struggled to understand the characters' motivations and feelings, and to care much about what happened to them. I don't know whether this was due to the 1950s translation being overly coy about sex, or to the elliptical nature of Colette's original narrative, or if I was running up against the same problem I have found when I've tried to read romance in the past, which is just that what's being described is so far from anything I've ever experienced that I find it utterly incomprehensible on an emotional level. Chéri himself is also not a particularly sympathetic character; he came across as a petulant man-child who seemed to expect that everything would be done for him by someone else, and his melancholy felt more like a spoiled child's tantrums than real emotion. I did like the coterie of bickering middle-aged courtesans among whom Chéri has been brought up, particularly in The Last of Chéri when the war seems to have lent all the women more power and self-determination (one of the many things that Chéri seems unable to deal with), and at one point I wondered if it was meant to be a gender-flip with Chéri as a male version of the ingénue surrounded by powerful men, but really, it was a slog to finish this and I'm still not actually sure I managed to understand it at all. (I'm not giving this a star rating, because I think my reaction probably has very little to do with the book's actual literary merit.)
mariamlreads's review against another edition
4.0
Este libro me ha resultado extrañamente acogedor. Deseando leer más de la autora.
djrmelvin's review against another edition
4.0
On the surface, this is the melodramatic love story of a boytoy and the woman who turned him out. But go deeper, and you see that the characters are going through a lot more than simply growing old - they're all growing up, a condition brought on not only by nature but also by post WWI Paris. Cheri was raised to be an ornament, something his mother, lover, and finally wife could be proud to call her own. What all these women failed to see was that while they moved forward in life, he wanted nothing more than to hold on to what he had - even if it didn't exist anymore. It's that realization, that all things change and that he was incapable of changing with them, that changed my opinion an whether Cheri was a weak coward or a tragic victim.
kirstypotter's review against another edition
2.0
Not for me unfortunately. Maybe tainted by the fact that I've been reading books lately that are very emotive and nostalgic and this was basically the opposite; the characters were frivolous, their speeches were full of empty words and it just fell flat for me.
anothetbennet's review against another edition
1.0
Not what I was expecting!
Chéri is such full of himself...couldn't get attached to these characters. Still going to watch the movie. I hope it's better since the trailer was the reason I wanted to read this.
Chéri is such full of himself...couldn't get attached to these characters. Still going to watch the movie. I hope it's better since the trailer was the reason I wanted to read this.
mydreamsaresilent's review against another edition
5.0
I couldn't tell you why but I have a fondness for this story. The way the author writes, her descriptions, the epoch/setting of this story - I dig it all. It's a very specific reader who would enjoy a story like this one, so I can appreciate how many wouldn't like it, but I really enjoyed it through and through. Full disclosure I saw the movie first, loathed the lead who played Fred, but the sumptuous sets and fashion stuck with me and informed my imagination while reading this. The translation was adequate. I'll say it a million times, I never like when an English translation takes liberties, though I get that it's necessary at times, I just love the flow of the French language and it's exactly that magic that gets lost when translated to English.