For those expecting “Diaries of a French Burlesque Dancer”, prepare to be disappointed. While one may approach Colette’s behind-the-scenes of a traveling pantomime artist in turn-of-the-century France expecting it to be flavored with salacious frivolity to match Colette’s reputation, what you’ll find is more an existentialist rumination on ambivalence, than story of a passionate life. In fact, if there’s one thing that most defines the divorcee-turned-stage-performer Reneé Neré, it’s her distrust of passion. Colette’s largely-biographical novel tracks the frustrations, distractions and depressions of a woman in her early thirties whom, in the fallout of a disastrous and damaging marriage, chooses a life of solitude on the stage, rather than one of societal rules. But it’s not a story of the gay and free life of an artist. Instead, the monotony and doubt expressed by Reneé are all-too-recognizable for any single woman reader today, particularly if that reader is in-between jobs and still trying to figure out what to do with her life, with men, and with herself. (ahem).

Did I enjoy this book? Not particularly. The protagonist’s reflections on self-doubt and self-denial are disruptive, and even at times, numbing.
Do I respect this book? Absolutely. To read something that speaks so frankly about women’s experience, women’s fears and women’s strength much less about a woman living in her own apartment and making her own living during a time when corsets were still ubiquitous, is both humbling and empowering. But to spend time with Reneé Neré, is to linger in a space of dissociative hesitation and unconscious compulsion. It’s uncomfortable, but truthful.

Read, respect, but do not expect to revel.



**The Dover Edition is terrible. Stanley Applebaum’s introduction is meant to replace what endnotes would be, but this book desperately needs endnotes for the cultural and historical references. Also, Applebaums new “Americanized” translation reads at times like an Archie comic book. The Enid MacLeod translation may be 60 years old and egregiously British, but it’s still better.**



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“for biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron,”

…and so on. So entering Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is to some extent, an expedition into the world of those leather-bound tomes full of dates, correspondences, and panegyrics from one great author to another. As one who reads 150 year-old fiction on a nonstop basis, this genre still felt quite foreign.

In persevering, though, I found some things well worth the search. I read the Oxford Classics edition and highly recommend it for its notes. The main challenge in reading, is that Gaskell is bound both by Victorian propriety and by perceived obligation to her friend Charlotte, to protect both her privacy and her reputation. Thus, no juicy bits or suppositions about what’s happening in-between the lines of her letters (and life). But the Oxford notes offer great annotations and corrections when possible. That enervating habit of 19th century authors to blank out names of people and places, gets filled in by flipping to the end notes. Hallelujah. (Though this did triple the length of reading time).

I still felt pretty distant from the Charlotte Brontë presented in the pages. The version of her you get is so much Gaskell’s redaction, that despite 70% of the text being letters from Brontë’s own hand, it still feels emotionally and contextually distant, (at least for this modern reader). But that’s likely a genre and context issue. It’s clear that Gaskell wanted Brontë’s critics to know that the author of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette was an unassuming and unpretentious woman who lived a quiet life of suffering and struggle, and who shied away from fame. Against Brontë’s detractors who accused her pseudonymous “Currer Bell” of being “course” and “un-Christian,” Gaskell displays the deep moral and spiritual convictions, reservedness and compassion that epitomized this Yorkshire curate’s daughter.

Though Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is perhaps less illuminating of Brontë’s relationships and life choices than is contemporary scholarship, the work is indeed, as Charlotte’s father Rev Patrick Brontë said, “in every way worthy of what one great woman should have written of another.”

What I enjoyed most was the amount of correspondence time Brontë takes in recommending and critiquing literature. Her relationship with her publishers turned into what seemed a perpetual book club of trading books and reviews. And what sticks out so often is that Brontë rarely mentions plot construction, setting or even language. Her responses almost always center on what the author uncovers or expresses of true human nature, or how the heart and mind of the author is revealed in their writing. That’s how I read Brontë’s writing as well. Not surprising then that it was in these passages that I got the clearest sense of who this woman was, and as a result, drew nearer to her.

Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is a must-read for any Brontë devotee, even if only to gain respect and sympathy for the short and impacting friendship shared by two culture-shaping women, who could never have predicted the reach of their legacies. This is Elizabeth mourning the loss of her friend Charlotte, in the kindest way she could think of. It is much appreciated.



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Having come to Les Miserables with only a North American osmosis-knowledge of the musical, memories of the 1998 film, and a lifetime of sermons referencing the encounter between Jean Valjean, the Bishop and the candlesticks, I am surprised by what I actually found here.

Maybe it was all the times I’ve seen high-schoolers perform “Do You Hear the People Sing?”, but somehow I got it in my brain that this was about the French Revolution. Maybe I conflated it with” A Tale of Two Cities” (wouldn’t be hard to do). But instead, we find ourselves in 1830 for the most part, dealing with a France recovering or revolting from the post-Napoleonic return to monarchy. While I know a lot about what was happening in England from 1790-1840, French history of this period is pretty much a blank for me. As a result, every time Hugo spent a couple chapters recreating the battle of Waterloo blow for blow or profiling specific royalist publications vs republican barroom conversations, I couldn’t help but feel a bit lost/bored.

Because here’s the charming/enervating thing about Hugo’s writing. You notice early on that every time a new character is introduced or even a new building entered, you are regaled with 40 pages detailing the history of everything leading up to the moment at hand, or sometimes ending twenty years in the past, with connections to the present only to be made 700 pages later. At first, especially when pertaining to the Bishop and his sister, these pastoral expansions of narrative-background help the reader gain a wide sense of the world inhabited by the characters. But by page 1030 when Hugo decides to spend 6 chapter sections on the history of Parisian sewers and how France would flourish financially if it used human waste to fertilize farmlands, you can’t blame yourself if you decide to skim a bit.

Ultimately, any adaptation of Les Miserables is plot-focused: Jean Valjean’s journey of atonement/rehabilitation or the love story between Cosette and Marius. But when you read the novel, it’s pretty clear that plot was just a means for Hugo to ruminate on a changing France and the forces which altered her. The book is far more history text than novel.

Further, Hugo appears a bit cagey in how he’s actually portraying his protagonists. It’s often difficult to discern when he’s praising their actions or mocking their self-delusions. Most surprising was the narration of the riots and barricade. Unlike the stouthearted portrayals on film and stage, these scenes from Hugo most often read sardonically and mockingly. He seems to treat all the characters with a fair bit of irony and often patronizes their noble intentions and celebrates their ineffectualness. This is not the anthemic battle cry of a Broadway show; it’s a deliberation on mankind’s folly and the ever-eroding nature of time.

Hugo’s ostensibly playful, ironic style also comes through rather delightfully in his obtuse chapter names, such as:

“V. It’s Not Enough To Be A Drunk To Be Immortal,”

“XVI. Where You Will Find The Words Of An English Tune Fashionable In 1832,”

or “IV. Mademoiselle Gillenormand Winds Up Deciding It Is Not Such A Bad Thing That Monsieur Fauchelevent Came With Something Under His Arm.”


Previously, I’ve never understood how people are willing to read an abridged version of a book. With Les Miserables, it makes sense. But then again, that leaves readers with the impression that Hugo only wrote a dramatic plot about identity and escape. If you’re going to tackle this epic, might as well read the one Hugo wanted you to know. Like Moby Dick, though, don’t beat yourself up if you skip 10 pages here and there.



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**The list is in order of release date; there is no preference hierarchy. Some of these have multiple screenwriters, but I just credited one writer each for simplicity. Also, I wrestled with whether or not to inlcude Lord of the Rings since in my mind it is beyond film or movie category, but simply, IS. But, according to the preceding criteria, there’s no way I could leave it off the list.