Even though I found her even more charming in the first of the series, Claudine at 17 is still charming (if a little bit raunchy). ( )

Claudine has left the small town of Montigny and gone to Paris in this second book in Colette’s ‘Claudine’ series. She’s such an engaging character – worldly because of her reading, well aware of the forces involved in the battle of the sexes, and yet still retaining a level of childlike sweetness as she enters the big city with her slug-studying father, housekeeper Melie, and cat Fanchette. Claudine is tough, swatting an old man over the head with her umbrella for pinching her behind in the streets of Paris, and yet also soft, looking forward to having a man who can be everything to her. (In a bit of a parallel, Fanchette is seeking a mate of her own, or as Melie puts it, “wants it so cruel she’s beside herself.”)

Claudine accepts homosexuality, in Paris meeting her gay nephew/cousin (it’s complicated, don’t ask) Marcel who is a major character in the novella, and she’s accepting of the inclination for older men to pursue young women, taking these things as natural, but she draws the line in an extreme case she comes across – her old school friend Luce who has also come to Paris and become the lover of her 59+ year old uncle. This was the same Luce who had a crush on her in school, and who Claudine would beat in response to her kissing, something they both enjoyed.

The book is a bit light in content and was heading for a more mediocre rating until the last quarter or so of it, when Claudine’s heart flutters in response to an increasing attraction with one of her own relations, who’s also an older man. Claudine is 17, Renaud is 40-something, and yet it seems oddly even; both are tentative and nervous, and Claudine does more than hold her own (though she proves she can’t hold her champagne). In real life, Colette was 20 when she married ‘Willy’, 34, and it seems that at least parts of these books are autobiographical. Regardless, the book really picks up at that point, and finished strong.

I’m predisposed to like Colette anyway – she’s light and playful, titillates us with little facts and images, and is so very French. This isn’t high fiction or anything, but Claudine’s ‘voice’ is unique, and there is a combination of down to earth honesty alongside cultural sophistication in Colette’s writing that makes it enjoyable for me.

Quotes:
“Elbow to elbow, we stayed silent; little by little, I relaxed against that kind, reassuring shoulder. At one moment, I lifted my head to him. His intelligent eyes looked down into mine and I smiled at him with all my heart. I have seen that man exactly five times; I have known him all my life.”

“Don’t you feel that I’m your daughter? I was that from the very beginning – ever since those very first days – I’ve been your obedient, astonished child. And much, much more astonished a little later on to feel that so many things were coming to her all at once – a father, a friend, a master, a lover. Oh, don’t say no, don’t stop me, let me say a lover too! A lover – one can find that any day – but someone who’s everything all the same time – someone, who, if he goes away, leaves you a widow and an orphan and utterly friendless – isn’t that an incredible miracle? You’re that miracle! I adore you!” ( )

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