Customer Reviews

Cherie and The Last of Cherie (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

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The two "Cheri" books are a tribute to the power of love and the beauty of the human spirit, written as only the divine Colette could have done.

In 19th-century Paris, formidable courtesan Lea, a once-breathtaking and sought-after beauty, is still beautiful in middle age, albeit a bit wiser and more wistful. A friend, Mmm. Peloux, herself an aging courtesan, sends Lea her only son Fred (affectionately known as Cheri) to be groomed in the ways of the world.

Cheri, a selfish, self-centered young man in his 20s, is almost excessively gorgeous. And Lea, a woman who is well beyond the infatuation stage and certainly well aware of all of his many frailties, is simply besotted with him. Under her care, Cheri is spoiled, pampered, gifted with expensive presents, and indulged in every possible way, from sexual to culinary delights. In his own pompously careless way, Cheri loves Lea as well, calling her "noun-noun," and partaking of her generosity, in bed and out, like a child. And so goes the relationship--Lea, looking over her shoulder at approaching age and the subsequent loss of her looks; and Cheri, taking everything she has to offer with complete abandon. Until his mother declares him groomed quite enough--and arranges a suitable marriage for him with a beautiful young woman.

So ends Book I, "Cheri." "The Last of Cheri" is quite a different matter, as chilling in its way as "Cheri" is sensual. The mood of the book is a type of frantic fear. Lea, ever the no-nonsense realist (in her line of work, she has to be) knows from her mirror that her time as a beauty is gone. Without Cheri, the spectre of aging begins to haunt her in a very real way, and with a kind of real terror, she contemplates her lonely and manless future. Money will not be a problem; Lea has invested the gifts from her many celebrated lovers with care and a clear head. But loneliness and the very real anguish over losing her young lover are overtaking her.

Cheri has changed too. He is no longer the eager young satyr, but, trapped in a loveless marriage, the gorgeous, greedy child has become a gorgeous, cynical man, almost overwhelmed by ennui. Cheri is in a dangerous depression, but nobody, including Colette herself, had a name for that condition in high-society Paris of the 1800s! Colette describes Cheri's state in unflinching terms. He needs Lea. Lea needs him. Is it possible? Can she still be his mistress?

The answer to that question provides the denoument to what really, in the end, is a human tragedy. This doomed couple cannot possibly survive as they are, and they do not. One dies. One survives. And the reader cannot help but sigh for Lea and Cheri, two lovers whose affair of the heart is overwhelmed by the realitis of life.

The first book, Cheri, is a rather trite love story about the affair of an older woman with her young lover. There are certain enjoyable sequences, and the sado-masochistic undercurrents keep things interesting, but the novel doesn't have much depth. It's the second novel, The Last of Cheri, where things truly get rich. Watch as the carefree, rich, beautiful Cheri slowly disintegrates into despair. The character, none too likeable in the first book, becomes almost sympathetic as he approaches his inevitable destruction. Money no longer interests him, his earlier hedonism no longer gives him the least satisfaction. Life, and his wife, have become a bore. Once having tasted the stratosphere of love, and loved the goddess Lea, existence in the ordinary can give him no satisfaction. All he has is memory. His best moments are behind him and the future can't offer anything to compare. All of his old acquaintances are busying and satisfying themselves with their grand little projects. These seem trivial to Cheri, even (especially!) his wife's noble charitable work. How pointless these endeavors are compared with love.

On the one hand it is almost satisfying to watch this shallow, callous young man's fall. He is the kind of person who, in the first book anyway, one would like to see get his. Yet one can not fail to sympathize, even empathize, with Cheri. We are not so different, we ordinary and haughty folk. We all feed on the same sustenance. Trying to live off memories, trying to revive the past and failing, these are things we humans do from time to time. For some, it consumes us.

These two short novels by the French writer Colette cover a territory with which I have to admit to being completely unfamiliar, that of a young man's romantic education by a much older "kept" woman -- a lifestyle I assume to be uniquely French. "Cheri" is the nickname of the man in question (real name: Fred), and his protectress and instructress in the arts of Eros is named Lea, who, an implied courtesan like his mother Madame Peloux, is kept wealthy by one or more benefactors. Having grown up fatherless and free from discipline, Cheri is immature and spoiled, self-assured that he will be amply supported by his good looks and the middle-aged women who dote on him.

At twenty-five, after living with Lea for several years, Cheri decides to marry a rich, younger girl named Edmee, and Lea understands that the time has come to let him go. Their separation is not as easy as that, however; the bottom line is that he truly loves Lea, more so than he does Edmee. With Lea he has developed a special relationship that somewhat perversely combines aspects of mother-son, boyfriend-girlfriend, and teacher-pupil. His greatest chagrin is the realization that he was even naive enough to assume that he was Lea's first and only lover, never conjecturing the sources of her income.

Colette's apparent purpose in these novels is to display a dramatic transformation of character. At nineteen, Cheri is a joyful and frivolous youth; at thirty, a discontented and disillusioned man suffering from an idle lifestyle and a loveless marriage. He is unable to relate to his wife Edmee, who does charity work for a hospital and hobnobs with various public figures -- selfless gestures that are alien to his personality. His involvement in World War I has given him another hard lesson in maturity, and now he is lost in the new post-war society, a world that has no use for a thirty-year-old man who acts like a child and is hopelessly in love with a woman old enough to be his mother.

It seems to me that Colette's literary value lies in her skill at depicting early twentieth century bourgeois France in a clear, conversational style that is more accessible than the impressionistic difficulties of Proust and Gide. In my estimate, her closest contemporary English counterpart would be Somerset Maugham; both writers manage to extract colorful but realistic drama out of the lives of ordinary people using straightforward but intelligent and sensitive prose that often evokes a certain elegance of setting, but Colette's characterization and attitude are distinctly French. Her American counterpart would be more difficult to identify.

In these two companion novels, Colette introduces and develops two of her most memorable creations -- Chéri, a handsome, but dissolute young man with little or no ambition, and his unlikely lover, Léa de Lonval, a middle- aged courtesan. The first novel vividly describes this relationship in all its various forms and stages, from its innocent beginning, maturation and joyful apogee to its painful disintegration and destruction. In the sequel, which takes place six years later, Colette poignantly describes how Chéri and Léa have dealt with their heartrending separation and what occurs when the couple try once more to reconcile.

Anyone (particularly a woman) who has been in this situation will recognize the feelings both lovers encounter. Colette had a way of distilling the moment and bringing it home where it resonates long after the book is closed. Cheri is insufferable, yet I understood his desire to look past the overweight, graying Lea, seeking the beautiful woman he had carried in his heart and mind so many years. Likewise, Lea's reluctance to allow her young lover to look too closely at the pearls around her throat...for fear he would notice the lines in her skin was toooo close for comfort. Colette makes all human frailties and vanities universal...very little has changed in the years since Cheri and Last of Cheri were written.

"I wept a little this evening," Proust wrote to Colette upon reading her love story, 'Mitsou'. I wept when I read these two short novels, 'Cheri' and 'The Last of Cheri'. So beautiful. So elegant. And so perfectly tragic and sad. (Just as a love affair should be!)

"Cheri" is the stronger of the two novels in this collection. Colette's deceptively simple prose records the ways of the heart, or at least the romantic behaviors of the rich and idle who have too little sense of purpose in life. "Cheri" begins with the awkward love affair already in progress. How the somewhat immoral pairing began is revealed in pieces throughout the chapters. As these disaffected people realize what their affair meant to each, the novel comes alive.

The book starts as a depiction of the rather narcissistic, self-interested duo-- a depiction that in the beginning is difficult to read because of the nearly sadistic egotism of the protagonists. It evolves into a searching examination of two profligate people unused to applying themselves to any ideal higher than their own gratifications. What they do to manage their dawning realization that they actually care for one another; why they let go of some of their self-delusions; how the love of each person is formed from the shallow and empty lives they led up to that point-- these are played out in heart-breaking scenes that give the novel its depth. "Cheri" depicts a certain time and place-- the French demimonde-- quite well while it is relevant to today's alienated and sometimes jaded moderns searching for, and evading, meaningful connections. This collection includes a well-written introduction by Judith Thurman that draws a thumbnail sketch of Colette's life and provides background information for the novel's setting.

Fred Peloux, also known as Cheri, is a very handsome young man who lives in France around the time of the first world war. Some years before, his mother, in an attempt to gain him some worldly experience, sets him up with Lea, a courtesan twice his age. Despite their great age difference, Cheri and Lea fall in love. After a fashion, Cheri's mother, believing that her son has had enough of that type of experience, breaks up her son's relationship with Lea and finds him a suitable wife, Edmee, who is closer to Cheri in age.

Several severe problems develop. Cheri and Lea are still in love, but Cheri does not love Edmee. Cheri is also a very spoiled, lazy and self centered young man. He would often abandon Edmee for weeks, without a word to his wife. He'd, instead, stay with other women, including Lea and other prostitutes. Other than Cheri's incredible attractiveness, he has nothing much else going for him. He does not work. Cheri comes to realize that he cannot go back to Lea; he was only one of many "lovers" Lea has accommodated, both prior to and after him. Although he makes appearances at his wife's abode from time to time, there is little if any love there. Cheri makes a half-hearted, unrealistic effort to get closer to his wife, but they both know that is impossible. Cheri grows more and more melancholic.

"Cheri" and "The Last of Cheri," which should be read together, are well written and capture the settings and attitudes of the era with perfection, but are, none the less, tragic tales of the selfishness and naivite of youth. While I found the character of Cheri almost impossible to like, I could not help feeling some pity for him

"The most moral thing I've ever written" by Colette

`Cheri' and the counterpart `The Last of Cheri' is an incredible and tragic love story between a womanizing man-slut and a virago courtesan, separated by time and age.

Colette's vivid imagery and thorough depictions of life among French aristocrats and courtesans is excellently portrayed through the various perspectives of a diverse cast among several social levels from the richest of all courtesans and the elderly to the ignorant youth -consumed by their own inadvertent impulses.

The characters are very well developed with idiosyncrasies that are so precise one could imagine that Colette may have been writing from personal experiences. The characters are described not with exposition, but through the vivid details of the Sheraton furnishings within their homes, the fabrics their clothes are made from, the food they dine with and even the scrupulous countenances which they hold their eyes.

The plot, at first is only seemingly slow and simple featuring bitchy ripostes and dry, witty and somewhat vindictive humor hints at the subtext unfolding between the characters while suggesting foreshadowing with a re-occurring theme throughout the book. After careful speculation of undertones beneath derisive exchanges and verbal jabs, it becomes clear that Colette is hinting these characters are doomed from the very first sentence, "Give it to me Lea, give me your pearl necklace."

A coddled, ignorant and a sardonic young lustful man with no desires or goals other than to use women; a boisterous and controlling mother; and an alabaster-toned courtesan with a kind heart full of passion and love are among the very few eccentricities thriving within this cleverly written and witty story full of dry, sarcastic humor and even a few heartfelt, teary moments. Cheri and The Last of Cheri is a poetic masterpiece that will remind readers the true morality of love.

I think Cheri and The Last of Cheri should be treated as one book. The relationship between Lea and Cheri, in my view, is far more complex than love between an older female and a young man. Lea is a woman who never married or had children, and for all we know, has no family. Cheri is a young man who grew up without a father or any other positive male role model. His life is ruled by a selfish and domineering mother, a former courtesan who neglected him when he was a child. Cheri spent early childhood in the care od servants.

He has known Lea all his life and has always loved her for her warmth and "goodness." As a young man, he found in her not only a lover, but also a substitute mother and a closest friend. Not knowing what love is, and being used to abandon others or be abandoned themselves, neither Lea nor Cheri foresaw how their separation would affect them. Don't we all often understand the value of something only after we have lost it.

By marrying Edmee, Cheri did what he was told, and it seemed perfectly sensible. His wife was young, beautiful, intelligent, moneyed and seemingly easy. And they seemed to have much in common, at least a similar background. At one point, they concluded they were both "orphans." The idea also was to have children, which Cheri could not have with an older mistress. But, "compatibilites", for lack of a better word, do not guarantee a solid marriage. Things don't always work out as planned, that's why we have so many divorcves today.

To call Cheri a boy who never grew up is oversimplification. By the time he reached 30, Cheri undestood perfectly well how unfulfilled his life had been. But like many people, he lacked the strength to do something about it. So he regretted that he did not spend a few more years with Lea, thinking that every extra day would have been worth having.

The characters from almost a century ago could easily be transposed to the present era when many parents are too preoccupied with their careers and material wealth, leaving children in the care of others. The difference is that Lea would end up in jail today, at least in the early years of her relationship with Cheri.

I would recommend the novel to readers who are interested in the complexity of human nature and emotion. It illustrates how certain energies bring people together and make them suitable for each other, regardless of their age and circumstances. But humans and their relationships are mortal. Nothing is forever.

Colette's prose is fluid. Cheri grabs the reader's attention from the first page - from the very first line. There is never a dull moment. But the book is not for people who are firmly grounded in present day realities and cannot see beyond them. It certainly is not for people who compartmentalize books and movies into comedy, horror, action, drama and "forein."