The Claudine Novels (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Colette (Author), Antonia White (Translator)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140183221
• ISBN-13: 978-0140183221
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,408,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My delicious Claudine, March 10, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Claudine Novels (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

For a book written in the Victorian era, it's very modern. Claudine evokes a mood, you can taste and feel Paris in 1900. It's a little racy, Claudine has both male and female lovers. How I wish there were more installments to Claudine!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Claudine the Great, April 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Claudine Novels (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

For novels a century old, the first thing that will take the reader by surprise is just how modern the narrator's voice is. Yes, the setting is in stuffy late Victoriana, with trips to Bayreuth and carriages and endless dinner parties, but sweet Claudine, who tells three of the four tales in this compliation, is aware, hilarious, darling and fiercely, fiercely intelligent.

The first novel is perhaps the best -- Claudine a l'ecole -- while the latter ones occasionally lag, esp. the rather dull "Claudine en menage." "Claudine s'en va" (Claudine and Annie) is a strange experiment, with the narrator we've grown to love over three novels suddenly turned into supporting character, but it's quick and entertaining.

And these books are wonderfully decadent. Let the conservatives wail about how debased our times have become, and then read these products of 1900-1903, with their frank journeys into lesbian sex, adultery, drug use -- and view the rather jaundiced way the characters approach such sacred cows as religion and marriage.

Also, this compliation is not complete, as it is missing "La retraite sentimentale", the final Claudine installment.

Collette would get even better, but this is a fine starting point.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Startling "girl and (later)"woman -power"book!, March 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Claudine Novels (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Forget all about English public school boys tales.Forget all about tales of'lost youth flames'(often going hand in hand with the latter,as it turns out..).Let yourself be taken in the land of(early 20th century)French country girl-power and (later on)Paris woman-power by the almighty female writer Colette."The Claudine novels"are witty,fresh,lucid when it comes to the conditions of the heart,and most generally FUN to read!You can see very well what Colette will do in her later ,maturer writing life.A must-read for every and each one soul on earth'Christophe Renaudot.