Secrets of the Flesh: a Life of Colette

Secrets of the Flesh: a Life of Colette

by JudithThurman (Author)

Synopsis

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was this century's first modern woman. She arrived in Paris around 1900 as the provincial child bride of a notorious rake and brilliant literary impressario, Willy, who signed her first novels, the Claudines, as his own. They invented the erotically reckless teenage girl as we know her, and became the greatest French bestsellers of all time. When this tumultuous marriage ended, Colette went off with a high-born woman lover, the virile Marquise de Belboeuf, and embarked on a flamboyant stage career. She bared her breast to raucous applause in the French music-hall and became a celebrity of the lesbian demimonde. Until her death in 1954, she continued to rewrite the rules for loving, working, and aging. At the end of the century, her life and work still have the power to challenge the norms.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 624
Edition: New
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 04 Sep 2000

ISBN 10: 0747548439
ISBN 13: 9780747548430
Book Overview: The brilliant biography of an extraordinary life that was published to huge acclaim in 1999. 'A ferociously intelligent, masterful life of Colette, which stays supremely in control of her wild, bold, brilliant and often obnoxious subject' Hermoine Lee, Books of the Year, OBSERVER 'The most distinguished biographies of the year have been for me Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman and COLETTE by Judith Thurman' Jane Gardam, Books of the Year, SPECTATOR

Media Reviews
THE MOST IMPRESSIVE AND FASCINATING BOOK OF THE . . . SEASON. NO NOVEL, NO MEMOIR, NO OTHER BIOGRAPHY DISPLAYS SUCH INSIGHT AND VITALITY. . . . Through deft observation, research, and beautiful writing, Thurman brings alive one of the most astonishing writers and women ever to stride this earth.
--USA Today
[Colette] has been the subject of . . . a half-dozen significant biographies over the past thirty years. Yet this one by Judith Thurman will be hard to top. . . . Its prose is smoothly urbane, at times aphoristic, always captivating.
--The Washington Post Book World
IT WILL STAND AS LITERATURE IN ITS OWN RIGHT.
--RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
THE MOST IMPRESSIVE AND FASCINATING BOOK OF THE . . . SEASON. NO NOVEL, NO MEMOIR, NO OTHER BIOGRAPHY DISPLAYS SUCH INSIGHT AND VITALITY. . . . Through deft observation, research, and beautiful writing, Thurman brings alive one of the most astonishing writers and women ever to stride this earth.
--USA Today
[Colette] has been the subject of . . . a half-dozen significant biographies over the past thirty years. Yet this one by Judith Thurman will be hard to top. . . . Its prose is smoothly urbane, at times aphoristic, always captivating.
--The Washington Post Book World
IT WILL STAND AS LITERATURE IN ITS OWN RIGHT.
--RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
Author Bio
Judith Thurman is the author of ISAK DINESEN: THE LIFE OF A STORYTELLER, which won the National Book Award for Biography in 1983. It formed the basis for Sydney Pollack's film OUT OF AFRICA, on which she was Associate Producer. Her essays on literature, film, culture and style have also appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation, Elle, Vogue and the Sunday Times. She lives in Manhattan.