We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,751,663.67 | Books Available: 730,385 | Members Online: 202

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Secrets of the Flesh : A Life of Colette

Secrets of the Flesh A Life of Colette
Author: Judith Thurman

1999 National Book Award nominee! In 1900, a provincial beauty best known as the child bride of a famous Parisian rake captivated the Belle Epoque by writing a story that invented the modern teenage girl. It was the first in a series of wildly popular but also critically acclaimed novels that, combined with a flamboyant career on the ... more »stage, made this former country girl the first authentic superstar of the century.

But for all her celebrity as one of France's greatest and most notorious novelists and personalities, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was a profoundly reticent and self-suspicious creature who fiercely resists being known. Now, following her acclaimed life of Isak Dinesen, winner of the 1983 National Book Award for biography, Judith Thurman gives us an incomparably nuanced and revealing portrait of the elusive woman, the prodigious writer, and the revered but misunderstood idol.

Having spent her village childhood in the shadow of a queenly, possessive mother who taught her the value of resilience, Colette would go on to embody the image of the modern woman. At twenty, she marries the canny but unscrupulous Willy, who not only takes the credit -- and the royalties -- for her best-selling Claudine novels, but also keeps her enthralled in more primal ways. In 1908, she divorces her Pygmalion and pursues the most public of her many affairs with women. At forty, she gives birth to her only and much-neglected child. Her second marriage, to her daughter's father -- a brilliant, predatory, patrician journalist and politician -- falters, then fails. At forty-seven, she seduces her adolescent stepson. At menopause, she rediscovers her mother. At fifty-two, she embarks upon a torrid adventure with a much younger man that blooms -- against all expectations -- into the serene and enduring mutual devotion she has yearned for but has never known. This third husband, Maurice Goudeket, also becomes the source of her worst anguish when he is arrested by the Gestapo during the Occupation.

As Colette redefines the conventions of loving and aging, she continues to live and write with Olympian vitality. Her principal subject is the bonds of love; her one true faith the consoling power of sensual pleasure. She opens a beauty institute and does makeovers in a lab coat; she produces a body of incisive journalism; she writes enchanting gems like Gigi and Sido, and provocative masterpieces like Cheri, Break of Day, The Ripening Seed, and The Pure and the Impure. Her wartime work remains the most controversial part of her legacy, and Thurman addresses the troubling questions it raises with a typically lucid and tenacious intelligence.

Drawing upon a rich mine of new documents, candid interviews, and unpublished letters, Secrets of the Flesh evokes Colette in the fullness of her contradictions.

A work of penetrating psychological insight, historical perspective, and literary discernment, superbly written, it is sure to reanimate our appreciation of its iconic subject.

ISBN-13: 9780394588728
ISBN-10: 039458872X
Publication Date: 10/12/1999
Pages: 624
Rating:

Currently 3/5 Stars.

3 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: Knopf
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Read All 3 Book Reviews of "Secrets of the Flesh A Life of Colette"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

Kelli Q. reviewed Secrets of the Flesh : A Life of Colette on 1/20/2006 + 15 more book reviews

An excellent telling of the life of the woman who scandalized Europe and America with books like "Gigi", "Cheri" and the Claudines stories. Her life was no less racy that the novels inspired by it, full of lovers of both genders, the acclaim of a stage actress, and finally, a place among the literary greats of France.

Share/Like this Review?

Read All Book Reviews of "Secrets of the Flesh A Life of Colette"

Genres:

Biographies & Memoirs >> Arts & Literature >> Authors
Biographies & Memoirs >> General
Biographies & Memoirs >> Specific Groups >> Women
Literature & Fiction >> World Literature >> French

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Secrets of the Flesh : A Life of Colette

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

Loading...