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In Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, Judith Thurman crafts an intricate and deeply sensitive portrait of one of France’s most enigmatic literary figures. Rather than simply documenting the milestones of Colette’s life, Thurman plunges into the emotional and sensual currents that shaped the woman behind the pen, offering readers an immersive biography that captures both the external glamour and internal contradictions of Colette’s world. The title, translated into English as Secrets of the Flesh, encapsulates the intimate and corporeal preoccupations that defined Colette’s literary themes and personal pursuits. Thurman does not shy away from the ambiguities of her subject’s nature; she instead allows these complexities to breathe, recognizing Colette’s resistance to moral or ideological categorization.
Colette’s journey from provincial girl to literary celebrity is rendered with striking narrative detail and psychological depth. Her early years, dominated by the intense influence of her mother, Sido, are presented as a crucible for her later artistic identity. Sido’s embrace of nature, sensuality, and personal autonomy became central to Colette’s writing and her understanding of selfhood. Thurman suggests that Colette’s voice—earthy, sensual, and vividly attentive—was formed in the garden and kitchen long before it found its way into novels and performances. This maternal legacy serves as an anchor throughout the biography, offering insight into Colette’s fierce independence and her emotional vulnerability.
Thurman explores Colette’s relationships not as footnotes but as central forces in her life and work. Her marriage to Henry Gauthier-Villars, the notorious “Willy,” is examined with a nuanced balance of criticism and understanding. Willy’s exploitation of Colette’s talent by publishing her early work under his name is not simply depicted as victimization, but as a formative experience in the evolution of her literary autonomy. Their relationship, though marked by betrayal, also facilitated Colette’s entrance into the Parisian literary world and gave her the initial audience that would later become hers alone.
As Colette grows into her own name, both on the page and on the stage, the biography reveals the fluidity of her identity—not only in terms of gender and sexuality, but in her continual reinvention as artist, performer, wife, mother, and public figure. Thurman navigates these transitions with empathy and scholarly precision. Her depiction of Colette’s affairs with women, notably with Mathilde de Morny (“Missy”), and her eventual role as a literary grande dame, underscores the radical nature of Colette’s self-determination in a culture that offered women little space for such autonomy.
The strength of Thurman’s biography lies not only in its richly detailed narrative but also in its interpretive lens. She is attuned to the literary textures of Colette’s work and draws seamless connections between life and art without reducing one to the other. The sensual world of Claudine, the introspective yearning of The Vagabond, and the quiet devastation of Break of Day are all placed within the personal context of their creation, yet Thurman resists biographical determinism. Instead, she views Colette’s writing as a form of transformation, a way of distilling pain and pleasure into enduring expression.
Thurman also resists hagiography. She does not obscure the less admirable facets of Colette’s character—her political ambiguities, her sometimes ruthless self-interest, and her complicity with Vichy France—but presents them as part of the broader mosaic of a woman shaped by her time, talent, and contradictions. This refusal to simplify Colette enhances the biography’s credibility and depth. The reader is left with a portrait of a woman who could be both lyrical and brutal, nurturing and selfish, progressive and complicit.
Ultimately, Secrets of the Flesh succeeds as both a literary biography and a cultural history. Thurman’s prose is elegant without being ornamental, and her research is rigorous yet never pedantic. She captures the vitality of Colette’s language and the sensual pulse of her world while never losing sight of the tensions that defined her. The result is a biography that not only informs but evokes, mirroring the vitality and multiplicity of its subject’s life.