COLETTE: The Difficulty of Loving

Even if this is the occasion of Colette's centenary, it seems strange that neither the author nor her British and American publishers mention that this biography is only very slightly different from an earlier one Miss Crosland published circa the time of her death. And what has it to contribute that we do not already know from Colette's 100 books which were such a splendid reflection of herself (she wrote ""only about what she knew"") or other extant works such as Goudeket's affectionate and modest memoir? It seems superfluous to review the skeletal facts of her life -- the unnatural attachment to her mother, the disillusioning marriage to the exploitative and unfaithful Willy, and then Sidi and finally the younger, devoted Maurice Goudeket. Crosland says rightly that there was nothing about Colette which was ""tepid"" -- but how else would one characterize a biography which gives an uninflected continuity of her life and her books in very dear, warm water prose?