CLOSE TO COLETTE

This is a tender and ecstatic chronicle of the thirty years of happy married life which Maurice Goudeket, as her third husband, spent with Colette, the famous French novelist. They first met when Colette was 52 and Goudeket 35, and they remained inseparable until the day of her death- ""it was hand in hand we made that long journey together"". Detachment is hardly to be expected of such a memoir, but there are many intimate glimpses of Colette: Colette in her kitchen and closets; Colette walking her dog and adoring her cat; Colette watching flowers unfold and talking to inserts; Colette moving house vigorously at least every two years; and above all, Colette writing every day with a disciplined drive which marked her as a genius. Indefatigable, greedy, gay, carefree, yet with a strong streak of realism and pessimism, Colette becomes a dominant figure. Goudeket touches only lightly on the childhood she herself recorded in her charming novels, and hardly at all on the miserable years of her earlier marriage to M. Willy.... It is a book to engrance all those who are now reading the Colette novels and to renew the interest of earlier devotees.