Colette: Earthly Paradise
By Colette
Why this book?
The first time I went to Paris, I found a copy of this book at a bouquiniste on the Quai de la Tournelle. I can honestly say it has never left my bedside. Colette, born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in 1873, was a ferocious talent, a novelist, memoirist, journalist, and colossal French cultural figure until her death in 1954. Earthly Paradise is an autobiography in essays, and hers is an extraordinary story. Born in small-town Burgundy, she was a showgirl at the Moulin Rouge, a traveling performer, was married twice, lived as a lesbian for a decade, had a facelift in the 1920s and at the height of her literary fame, opened a beauty salon in Paris. She was to the core a sensualist and though she claimed to dislike feminism, she was a tower of female strength. But the reason this book—just one of her fifty-five—endures is her achingly gorgeous writing.
No one writes about the natural world with such passionate detail, or as keenly about the raw emotion of love, or as passionately about her country. One of the last essays in the book, Paris from my Window, written during the German occupation in 1940-41, is unforgettable, and perhaps the greatest tribute I have ever read to the resilience both of France and its people.
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