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A review by zoolmcg
Chéri by Colette
emotional
relaxing
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
For a book that I picked up solely because of it's cover, I have to say that deciding to read this was one of the best choices I've ever made. Colette provides a subtly sensual story, one of subversive roles and tragic outcome, that left me speechless for a good five minutes after putting it down.
The prose of this novel is easily the best thing about it. She has a way with words that really transform these places and these people into such tangible beauty to hold in your mind. From the beginning, it's extremely unputdownable, even when not a lot seems to be going on, it's just the experience of being in such an opulent era and setting that forces you to stay enraptured with in it; to put the book down is to leave 1920s Paris, and with a set up like this, no-one would ever dream of doing so.The parts that shone for me were the states of the beginning at the end, of setting the introduction and the conclusion in such intimate parts of Léa's house, and having Chéri being one lectured. A lot of description to do with facial expressions and feelings shot me in my heart, and I know rereading this is going to consistently kill me off. It's such a tragic end, only because they don't end up together, but because everything Léa told him was indubitably correct: she has been the one arresting his development, and she can't help but love the boy that she engineered to be in love with her. The last line, comparing him to a man free from prison, filled me with such sorrow for her but optimism for him, and so few writers have be able to evoke such contrasting emotion in me with such a simple narrative.
I found almost all the characters of this novel hard to empathise with besides the main two. Although Edmée exists solely to feel sorry for - as the discarded woman being passed up for Léa, I felt that we hadn't spent enough time with her to feel her side of the conflict. She represents much of the placid and forgiving wife, which is sad in itself, but without another climax or argument after their first one, she sort of faded in the background of the narrative as a mere complication device rather than an actual person. While true that she is necessary for many of the feelings we experience for Chéri, I only wish that she was spoken of more, and had more agency than she was awarded. As for Old Lili, though, I thought her brief presence was a great addition to the central theme of the story, and how she and her younger lover offer that mirror to Chéri and Léa's relationship, which would be doomed to be either transactional, a cause for gossip, or both.
I loved the experience of this short book, and I will no doubt be recommending it to anyone searching for a short read. I'm excited to hunt down its sequel and subsequently the film adaptation(s).
The prose of this novel is easily the best thing about it. She has a way with words that really transform these places and these people into such tangible beauty to hold in your mind. From the beginning, it's extremely unputdownable, even when not a lot seems to be going on, it's just the experience of being in such an opulent era and setting that forces you to stay enraptured with in it; to put the book down is to leave 1920s Paris, and with a set up like this, no-one would ever dream of doing so.
I found almost all the characters of this novel hard to empathise with besides the main two. Although Edmée exists solely to feel sorry for - as the discarded woman being passed up for Léa, I felt that we hadn't spent enough time with her to feel her side of the conflict. She represents much of the placid and forgiving wife, which is sad in itself, but without another climax or argument after their first one, she sort of faded in the background of the narrative as a mere complication device rather than an actual person. While true that she is necessary for many of the feelings we experience for Chéri, I only wish that she was spoken of more, and had more agency than she was awarded. As for Old Lili, though, I thought her brief presence was a great addition to the central theme of the story, and how she and her younger lover offer that mirror to Chéri and Léa's relationship, which would be doomed to be either transactional, a cause for gossip, or both.
I loved the experience of this short book, and I will no doubt be recommending it to anyone searching for a short read. I'm excited to hunt down its sequel and subsequently the film adaptation(s).