'Chéri' and 'The End of Chéri'

Love is central to all Colette’s mature fiction. To her second husband of three, this seemed a waste of her talent. “Aren’t there other things,” he griped, “in life?” A political journalist and editor of some of her most brilliant reportage, he urged her to look outside the bedroom window. (An improvement on the first husband, who made her pen a series of autobiographical novels, published them under his own name, and pocketed the handsome proceeds. The third, bless his soul, let her be.)