{"id":601,"date":"2023-12-26T15:54:30","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T15:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/?p=601"},"modified":"2023-12-28T15:49:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-28T15:49:02","slug":"a-trying-life-living-omitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/26\/a-trying-life-living-omitted\/","title":{"rendered":"A trying life, living omitted"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/a>Ch\u00e9ri and The End of Ch\u00e9ri<\/a> by Colette<\/a>
My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a>

Having not been familiar with the world of courtesans in early twentieth century France, I was somewhat surprised by the premise of the novels Ch\u00e9ri and The End of Ch\u00e9ri<\/a>, which were published in 1920 and 1926, respectively. Ch\u00e9ri is a young man whose mother is a wealthy, independent courtesan, and the first novel focuses on his affair with his mother’s fellow courtesan, L\u00e9a, who, at almost 50, is about twice Ch\u00e9ri’s age. Ch\u00e9ri and L\u00e9a lounge about and make love, and Ch\u00e9ri seems like he would be quite happy spending the rest of his life with his face nestled in L\u00e9a’s bosom playing with her pearls. He has no direction and very little personality, but, as we are told, he is very beautiful.

L\u00e9a is a more interesting and fully-formed character, as are the other courtesans in his mother’s circle, but the focus is on Ch\u00e9ri, who is entering into an arranged marriage with Edm\u00e9e, a rich young woman who, for reasons that weren’t clear to me, is willing to put up with his nonsense. Ch\u00e9ri is very unhappy about his impending nuptials, and behaves like a spoiled child, bucking against his fate while doing little to open any other options for himself. I found him infuriating, as I’m fairly sure Colette<\/a> meant him to be. At its core, Ch\u00e9ri<\/em> depicts how emotionally fraught and destructive this relationship is for both Ch\u00e9ri and L\u00e9a, and it is by far the better of the two novels.

The End of Ch\u00e9ri<\/em> opens after World War I, six years after Ch\u00e9ri and L\u00e9a have parted. Ch\u00e9ri has returned from the front a changed man, but this change is apparent to the reader only in that Ch\u00e9ri can’t rally with his usual bravado when he’s down, and that people keep noting his beauty is now tainted with weariness. The novel amounts to an oddly detached portrayal of post-traumatic stress disorder–Ch\u00e9ri’s experiences in the war are only alluded to, with the reason for his malaise placed squarely on his lost love with L\u00e9a. The book is a trying grind as he wanders aimlessly in a changed society he no longer understands. Colette focuses on the effects of aging and the passing of time, visiting L\u00e9a only briefly. I missed her in the novel almost as much as Ch\u00e9ri did. I also never gained any insight into Edm\u00e9e, who is now presumably finding emotional satisfaction in her nursing work and her own love affairs.

Both of these novels were innovative for their time–the first in depicting the emotional wreckage of an unusual relationship and the second in focusing on a character with PTSD. However, Colette’s narrow spotlight on Ch\u00e9ri, whose emotional distance frustrates both L\u00e9a and Edm\u00e9e, creates a detached, unemotional experience for the reader. While I found the books interesting in an intellectual sense, they weren’t involving. Colette picked her most boring character for her main one. I wish she had gone into the other characters’ heads more, making Ch\u00e9ri an enigma for us to figure out along with them. That would have made for a truly fascinating pair of novels.

Rachel Careau<\/a> seems to have done a very thorough, careful job with these translations, so if you’re interested in the later Colette novels, I would highly recommend this edition. if you’re not already a fan of Claudine at School<\/a> and her other better-known works, though, I wouldn’t start here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ch\u00e9ri and The End of Ch\u00e9ri by ColetteMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Having not been familiar with the world of courtesans in early twentieth century France, I was somewhat surprised by the premise of the novels Ch\u00e9ri and The End of Ch\u00e9ri, which were published in 1920 and 1926, respectively. Ch\u00e9ri is a young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRPpr-9H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonwein.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}