Barks and Purrs

Sidonie-Gabrielle ColetteProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 103K words
Chapters: 11

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Barks and Purrs by ColetteAuthor: Colette, 1873-1954,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

Barks and Purrs is a short work by Colette written from an animal perspective; the English translation of the French original preserves her light, sensory prose. It succeeds not through plot but through tone and observation: the "dialogue" between dog and cat is both a game of personification and a gentle irony about human-animal relations. Colette excels at bodily sensation and everyday detail; this small book is suited to reading a passage or two in spare moments, to appreciate how she builds layers of emotion with minimal scenes. For readers of French literature, it can serve as an easy side door into Colette's world; for writers, it is a model text for observing "how to make a nonhuman narrator avoid seeming contrived."

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers of foreign literature who like Colette and want to start with short works
Writing enthusiasts interested in animal narrative and personification
Readers needing light English reading and preferring fragmentary reading
Readers studying English translation of French literature and early twentieth-century style

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting complete long-form plots and strong conflict
Readers seeking knowledge of animal behavior or popular science content
Readers uncomfortable with personified animal voices

Reading tips

Read one short section at a time, pause after finishing, and note changes in the narrator's tone rather than plot direction.
Read alongside a Chinese translation or excerpts of the French original to appreciate what is preserved and lost in the English rendering of Colette's sensory diction.
After finishing, revisit the opening passages to observe how the dog's and cat's perspectives are established, then assess the pacing of the whole.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a collection of short pieces?

It is a short work of animal narrative, unfolding in dialogue-like passages from the perspectives of a dog and a cat. It is brief and not a novel with a continuous plot, and is better suited to reading in sections.

Can I read it without having read other works by Colette?

Yes. This small book does not depend on prior works; its language is direct and its scenes simple, making it a good first encounter with Colette's style. If it sparks interest, one can then move on to her more complete longer works.

Does the English translation lose the flavor of the original?

Colette's hallmark is sensory detail and tonal rhythm; the English translation adjusts syntax somewhat, but the overall light, intimate tone still comes through. Readers of French will gain more by reading excerpts against the original.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette Author · French · 1873–1954

Colette (1873–1954), born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was a French woman writer from Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in Burgundy. She first rose to fame with the "Claudine" series; after her divorce she worked as a music-hall performer and journalist, experiences that shaped her later observations of women's lives and emotional relationships. Her works often draw on childhood memories, provincial settings, and women's experience, with delicate, sensuous prose that reveals desire and independence within spare narratives. Her representative works include Chéri, La maison de Claudine, and Gigi, and the collection also includes Les heures longues, 1914–1917 and Barks and Purrs. She was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1945 and, after her death in Paris in 1954, received a state funeral.