The central part of the novel is about a young woman, collette. But into this creeps a fictional man who lives down the hill called vial. He's in love with Collette and would very much like to have an affair with her. The book ends without any vial in it at all,. just with a whole passage about cido and the natural world. And so it's a really wonderful book, and most innovative in both formal and theom terms. I think.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French writers of the twentieth century. The novels of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 - 1954) always had women at their centre, from youth to mid-life to old age, and they were phenomenally popular, at first for their freshness and frankness about women’s lives, as in the Claudine stories, and soon for their sheer quality as she developed as a writer. Throughout her career she intrigued readers by inserting herself, or a character with her name, into her works, fictionalising her life as a way to share her insight into the human experience.
With
Diana Holmes
Professor of French at the University of Leeds
Michèle Roberts
Writer, novelist, poet and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
And
Belinda Jack
Fellow and Tutor in French Literature and Language at Christ Church, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson