Review: Cheri and Last of Cheri by Colette

Title: Cheri / Last of Cheri
Author: Colette
Genre: Classics
Publisher: Penguin Classics
First published: 1920
Pages: 247

Rating: 8 out of 10

This is a combination of two individual books, usually paired together in one volume, 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, 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, with realistic and interesting characters.

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 well over twice my age, I always find age differences fascinating to read about.

Chéri, the main character, was someone who I found myself hating intensely and sympathizing with all at once. He is far from admirable, being closer to evil than good. 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, she asks us?
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 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 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.


The only thing that I disliked was a minor quibble. I was annoyed at 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?


Now for the second volume, The Last of Chéri. This sequel opens with a changed Chéri. He is somewhere between ten to twenty 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.

Review: The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

Title: The Winter Ghosts
Author: Kate Mosse
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Putnam
Published: 2011
Pages: 288

Rating: 4 out of 10

While driving alone at night in 1928 France, a man named Freddie gets into a car accident after he hears strange voices in the wind. In a small town nearby, a kindly woman agrees to let him stay at her inn and recover. Freddie is still mourning the loss of his brother Henry, who died years ago in World War I. Everyone else seems to have moved on and gotten over the war's tragedies, but Freddie simply cannot. When making his way to an event in town one foggy night, Freddie takes a few wrong turns and finds himself at a strange party, where he meets an intriguing, beautiful girl named Fabrissa. The two instantly develop a strong bond, but Freddie soon begins to fear that Fabrissa and her past are not at all what they seem.

This book was breezily written, and I got through it quickly. It was alright, and Kate Mosse has a very pretty way of writing; I loved her style. Her prose is excellent, and suits itself to the fairytale type of writing perfectly.

I only wish that the rest of her book followed so gracefully.

The book seemed quite childish to me, and not in a good way - in an unrealistic, raised-eyebrows sort of way. Things happened that I found very improbable, that were never tied up.

Freddie, the main character, was not one that I understood. He is still grieving for his brother Henry as if he had only passed away yesterday. Alright, but why? What is behind this? And how close of a bond did he have with his brother before the war began? The author never gives us any history whatsoever into the brother's relationship, which made Freddie come across to me as more of a psychotic boy with separation issues than a character I could sympathize with. Mosse's many descriptions of pain, of loss, and of the grief of missing someone were written beautifully, but without the power behind it, they were only pretty words that lacked depth.

Fabrissa is the only other character of major importance. She is introduced to us as stunningly beautiful, extremely perceptive, and mysterious. She seemed very intriguing, but she too lacked any depth or reality. Of course I knew her secret (or at least most of it) right from the beginning, but it still failed to make me warm to her.

Freddie and Fabrissa's meeting annoyed me. He basically falls in love with her at first sight, something that nearly always earns an eye roll from me. Only a few books have ever pulled that off, in my opinion, and this certainly isn't one of them. Within literally five minutes of first setting eyes upon each other, Freddie and Fabrissa are intimately discussing extremely personal details, and exchanging philosophies on loss, death, and other such things. It seemed highly forced to me.
About half an hour later, they are sitting alone in the snow and have now shared each other's life stories. They basically now know everything about each other and are (of course) hopelessly in love. Well, it's about time! Half an hour, gosh, no need to take things so slowly...
Freddie tells Fabrissa that he has "never met anyone else" like her.

After this, however, he wakes up and is told by everyone that he never went out last night. No one seems to know what party he is talking about, and no one has ever heard of anyone named Fabrissa. Is he crazy? I thought that this part of the book was interesting, waiting to see what Freddie would do and how he would come to a conclusion about this question.
But the conclusion wasn't exactly satisfactory. Once again, everything felt entirely forced.
Freddie goes back to his crashed car with a few other men to help. Once he gets there, he becomes convinced that Fabrissa is somewhere nearby. He convinces the other men to leave. And this is in freezing snow - and they would really just leave him? When they were saying that very day that he was not right in the head (more delicately, of course)? I don't think so.
Freddie even assures them that if he gets too cold, he'll just wait in the car to warm up. I giggled a bit. Um... If a car has been sitting broken down outside in the freezing wilderness for a few days, it is just as cold in there as it is out of it. And the doors would probably be frozen shut anyways.
However, the other men seem to see nothing suspect about a mentally unstable man urging them to leave him behind in the snow. They go merrily on their way, after which Freddie somehow seems to know that he must climb up a hill, where he finds a cave, where he finds a dress (which he again somehow knows is Fabrissa's). There was a very suspiciously high amount of "somehow knowing" going on.

At the end, many of my questions were left still unanswered. Why would Fabrissa choose to speak to Freddie, one person in 600 years? What was so special about him? The book had a lot of holes in it.

It was alright. Not very well written considering characters and plot, but the writing itself (out of context) was pretty, which saved this book a little bit.

If you are in the mood for a quick, easy read that is eerily pretty, go ahead and read this. Appreciate the writing, but try not to examine anything else too deeply.

Review: The Year is '42 by Nella Bielski

Title: The Year is '42
Author: Nella Bielski
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 2004
Pages: 224

Rating: 3 out of 10

It didn't take long to discover with great certainty how much of a disappointment this book was going to be. The stilted descriptions, the crazily unstructured plot, and most of all, the author's writing style (or perhaps it was the translation?).
A glance at the inside cover had intrigued me - it contained some of my favorite plot elements. World War II, spies, Paris, society... The author even dropped Coco Chanel's name.
Within just a few pages, however, I couldn't help but choose another book off my library pile to read. Yes, I have a vow to finish every book... But despite this one being relatively brief, I had to force myself to reach the last page.

Immediately after starting this odd book, I noticed the jolting, painful writing. For some reason, the author does not seem to be aware of quotation marks. They were invented for a reason - why does she think she doesn't need them?
Whatever the reason for her pointedly refusing to include one single quotation mark in the entire book, it does not work.
And since there is a lot of dialogue, it was not only extremely annoying, but also confusing and a large barrier between the characters and the reader.
For instance, this part of the book:

"...places the volume of Goethe on the table in front of her. It can't be true! For a long time father has dreamt of finding this edition of Werther! She speaks the words slowly..."

The only indication of a difference between dialogue and narrative is the change of tense. An entire novel of this was beyond tedious.

Also, many, many things in the book simply do not seem to go across to the reader. Was I missing something?
For example, when Hans and Karl suddenly say "Look!" (without quotation marks, though), and point to a Jewish man walking down the street. Why did they do this? Shock? Anger? Fear? It has nothing to do with their conversation, or anything in the story at the moment.
It is a scattered gathering of little things such as this that often made me feel as if I was the third person visiting two lifelong best friends. Things they say, I do not understand or appreciate. And as a reader, this is not a good feeling to have about characters.

The characters themselves were set up to be something grand - a German man residing in Paris who is regarded as a kind of socialite star, his beautiful lover, a spy involved in the French Resistance...
And yet, none of them could hold my interest.
They all remained grounded firmly in the pages of the book, never taking on a life of their own. In fact, quite the opposite.

The plot itself was also pretty much nonexistent. Some authors can pull off this casual wandering through the story, but Bielski cannot. I would find it hard to describe the plot line of this book to anyone who asked, save that it took place in Paris, 1942.

The name dropping on the inside cover? Don't be pulled in... Coco Chanel does not make so much as one appearance in the book, her name is simply mentioned once and that is that.

The only reason that this book is getting 3 stars instead of 2, or perhaps 1, is because I actually liked the book a bit toward the end.
Did the characters grow more lovable? No.
Actually, they disappeared.

The author switches scenes and pulls out attention to another scene entirely. The reason cannot, like many astounding "creative" things she does, be grasped.
But maybe she should have stuck with these characters the entire time, because I liked them, and their stories, much better.
A sorrowful old man who used to play the violin falls in love with a beautiful young opera singer, and a loving daughter seeks to take care of him amidst the terrors of being a Jew in 1942. When her father's soprano love is killed during a Jewish roundup, she tells him that she is simply off singing in another city, and that the war is over.
It is a bittersweet, heartfelt story that I found much more realistic than the first. I can't exactly call it well-written: the writing is simply too jarring.
And, of course, an author can't just introduce completely new characters in the middle of the book for no reason, good characters or bad.

It turned out that the characters did have a relation to the story - the daughter treats Karl (the previous main character) for a rash.
What?!
I wonder where the author got this plot from... A dream, perhaps? It is certainly scattered and bizarre enough to be a possibility, but not in a good way.

All in all, this is quite a bad story. I will not be reading anymore from this author.