Gigi and The Cat by Colette – #ReadingtheMeow2026

June 17, 2026June 17, 202625 Comments

Translated by Roger Senhouse (Gigi) and Antonia White (The Cat).

I wasn’t sure what to read for this year’s Reading the Meow (a yearly cat-themed reading event hosted by Mallika), but then I came across this pair of stories by the French author Colette – Gigi, first published in 1933, and The Cat, which first appeared in 1944 as La Chatte. I’ve never read anything by Colette and have been intending to for a long time, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. Only the second story fits the Reading the Meow theme, but as this Vintage Classics edition includes both, I’m reviewing Gigi here as well.

I’ll start with The Cat, which is novella length and follows a young newly married couple, Alain and Camille. Alain, an only child, has grown up at the centre of his mother’s world and although he finds his new wife attractive, he doesn’t feel ready to leave behind the comforts of his family home to embark on a new life with her. This is frustrating for Camille, particularly after they move temporarily into a friend’s apartment and she discovers that Alain keeps sneaking back home to visit his mother and his beloved Russian Blue cat, Saha. Alain misses Saha so much that eventually she comes to live with them and from this point it becomes obvious that there’s only room for one female in Alain’s heart – and it’s not Camille! As the days go by, Camille grows more and more jealous of her husband’s cat until she finally decides that she needs to take action…

I found this a dark, unsettling story and although it’s also quite a simple one on the surface, there’s a lot of psychological depth. Camille and Alain are complete opposites in terms of personalities – Alain is quiet, sensitive and introverted, while Camille is lively and outgoing – and they begin to irritate each other as soon as they’re married. They have very different outlooks on life, with Camille being ambitious and forward-thinking and Alain struggling to move on and leave his childhood behind. Saha has been his companion for many years and is his last connection to the safety and security of his past, so Camille finds herself competing not just against the cat, but also everything the cat represents. I suspect she and Alain would have discovered their incompatibility anyway, but Saha’s presence makes it happen much more quickly!

Gigi is about half the length of The Cat and is a much lighter story. The title character, Gilberte (known as Gigi), is fifteen years old, that awkward age where you’re not quite an adult and not quite a child. Her mother is preoccupied with her career as a singer in a Parisian music hall and has left most of Gigi’s upbringing to her grandmother and Aunt Alicia, who are grooming her for life as a courtesan, like themselves. With Gigi’s mother, who works for a living, as a warning of what happens if a woman fails to find a wealthy man to support her, Gigi is being educated in all the skills her grandmother and aunt consider necessary for her future – dancing, table manners, rolling cigars and knowing the value of expensive jewels. The only man currently in Gigi’s life on whom she could try out these skills is family friend Gaston Lachaille. Grandmother and Alicia begin making plans for Gigi to become Gaston’s mistress, but it seems Gigi herself has other ideas!

Gigi is fun to read (if you ignore the morals of two older women pushing a fifteen-year-old girl into a relationship with a thirty-three-year-old man) and is a story about choosing your own way in life and doing what you want to do rather than what other people think you should do. It’s certainly a more uplifting story than The Cat, although I personally found The Cat more interesting and a perfect choice for Reading the Meow.

Have you read either of these stories? What else should I read by Colette?

Book 1/20 of 20 Books of Summer

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (re-read)

June 1, 2026June 2, 202632 Comments

I hadn’t been planning a re-read of this book, but when FictionFan announced a review-along I couldn’t resist joining in. I’m not sure exactly when I first read it, but it must have been around twenty years ago when I went through a phase of reading Victorian sensation novels (if you’re not familiar with the term, the sensation novel was a popular genre of 19th century fiction featuring shocking crimes in ordinary domestic settings). This is one that I particularly enjoyed so I was happy to read it again and am looking forward to reading the other review-along participants’ reviews to see what everyone else thought!

Lady Audley’s Secret was published in 1862 and was Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s most successful novel, although she wrote more than eighty others, as well as some short stories. The first thing I discovered when I started to re-read it is that I could barely remember anything at all about it, so it was almost like experiencing it for the first time again.

The novel opens with the marriage of Sir Michael Audley and Lucy Graham. Lucy is young and beautiful and Sir Michael, a middle-aged widower, is enchanted by his new wife. Little is known about her past before she arrived in the village as governess to the local doctor’s children, but Sir Michael doesn’t care – Lucy’s happiness is all that matters to him. Meanwhile, his nephew, Robert Audley, has just been reacquainted with his old friend George Talboys, who has been in Australia for three years. George, who had found himself struggling financially, had left his wife, Helen, in England while he went off to improve his fortunes. Now that he’s returned, he’s looking forward to seeing her again and is heartbroken when he discovers that she has died during his absence.

Robert does his best to comfort his friend and brings him to Audley Court to meet Sir Michael, hoping it will help to take his mind off things. However, when George disappears without explanation, Robert begins to grow suspicious of his uncle’s new wife. Convinced that George has been murdered and that the new Lady Audley is implicated, Robert begins to investigate her past and is shocked by what he discovers.

I won’t discuss the plot in any more detail as I don’t want to give too much away, but all the typical elements of a sensation novel are here: murder, arson, family secrets, stolen letters, faked telegrams, blackmail, hidden identities, thunderstorms and all sort of lies and deception! The book also touches on some more serious topics, such as the subject of madness, how it was viewed in the 19th century and how it was often used as a convenient excuse to have women locked away in order to avoid embarrassment or scandal. It’s not really difficult to guess some of the secrets but, remembering that this was one of the first and most influential books of its type, I expect readers at the time would have found it more shocking and unpredictable. It would also have had some extra relevance for Victorian readers, as Braddon took inspiration from the high profile Constance Kent murder case of 1860, which also inspired parts of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and, much later, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale.

One thing I had forgotten from my previous read was how little of the story is actually written from Lady Audley’s perspective. Instead, we spend most of the novel in Robert Audley’s company as he tries to get to the bottom of his friend’s disappearance. Although ‘detective fiction’ didn’t really exist in 1861 in the way we know it today, Robert, who is a lawyer, takes on the role of an amateur detective, tracing clues, gathering evidence and speaking to witnesses. It’s fascinating to watch him gradually begin to unravel the truth, although I didn’t always agree with what he did with the information he uncovered! Because most of what we see and learn of Lady Audley is from Robert’s point of view, she’s very much the villain of the book, but I think it’s clear that Braddon wants us to at least have some sympathy for her circumstances, if not her actions. I was a bit disappointed that George’s sister, Clara Talboys, doesn’t play a bigger part in the story, though – when she’s first introduced, it seems she’s going to join Robert in his investigations, but she barely appears again until the end.

I enjoyed my re-read, then; it’s a very readable book and although it’s quite a long one and the pace slows down at times, I still flew through the pages faster than you would expect. I’ve also read two other books by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, both of which I’ve reviewed on my blog: Aurora Floyd and The Doctor’s Wife. The first has quite a similar feel to Lady Audley’s Secret, although I didn’t find it as exciting, but the latter is very different. I’ll definitely try to explore more of Braddon’s books soon, but I would also like to revisit East Lynne by Ellen Wood and some of my favourite Wilkie Collins sensation novels.

Here are the reviews of the other review-along participants. Let me know if I’ve missed yours!

FictionFan’s Book Reviews

Rose Reads Novels

Novel Deelights

Kelly’s Thoughts and Ramblings

What? Me Read?

Letter to My Judge by Georges Simenon

May 15, 202617 Comments

Translated by Howard Curtis

Georges Simenon is more famous for his Maigret detective series, but he also wrote a large number of standalone psychological thrillers which he described as romans durs, or ‘hard novels’, in reference to the dark, bleak atmosphere and difficult, harrowing lives of the characters. I’ve read five of them now and Letter to My Judge is the darkest so far. It was originally published in French in 1947 and is now available from Penguin Classics in a new English translation.

As the title suggests, the book is written in the form of a letter. The writer is Dr Charles Alavoine and we know from the beginning that he is in prison, having just been found guilty of murder. The Judge of the title is an examining magistrate, or juge d’instruction to use the French term, the person responsible for carrying out a pre-trial investigation and preparing the evidence. During his trial, Charles heard the Judge state that he didn’t think the murder was premeditated, so he’s decided to write him a letter proving that it really was premeditated and that he knew exactly what he was doing when he committed the crime. It may seem an odd thing to want to prove, but Charles feels that it’s important to have his full story heard by someone.

In his letter, Alavoine begins by looking back at his early days when he qualified as a doctor and bought a practice in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon in western France. We then hear about his first wife, who died in childbirth, and the arrival of Armande, who came to take care of his young daughters and ended up marrying him. Armande is a practical, capable woman who quickly begins to dominate the household, the medical practice and every aspect of her husband’s life. Charles doesn’t love her but he needs a wife and she seems to be as good a choice as any. Things change when he meets a young woman, Martine, at a station and feels a desire for her that he has never felt for Armande. Charles is determined not to lose Martine now that he has found her, but events quickly begin to spiral out of control, leading to the crime for which he will later stand trial.

With the whole book written from Charles Alavoine’s perspective, this means we get right inside the mind of a killer, which makes this an intense, uncomfortable read. Alavoine has few, if any, redeeming qualities and is an unpleasant, abusive person from beginning to end. Apparently this was a deeply personal book for Simenon, who said “I wrote it in order to rid myself of my ghosts, not to commit the same deed carried out by my protagonist”. It seems that Simenon himself, like Alavoine, treated the women in his life badly, which is disappointing to know, although he at least had enough self-awareness to write an honest, reflective book like this one. It’s definitely a very disturbing story, though, even more so than the others I’ve read by him and I’m sure the autobiographical aspect is partly responsible for that.

As well as being an unsettling book to read, it’s also quite a gripping one. Although there’s not really any mystery as we already know the outcome of Alavoine’s story from the beginning, we don’t know what led him to that point so there’s still some suspense as we watch everything unfold. It’s not my favourite of the romans durs I’ve read so far, but it’s certainly a powerful novel and not one I’ll forget easily.

Thanks to Penguin Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

April 28, 202615 Comments

I’ve read very little of Iris Murdoch’s work – her Booker Prize winner The Sea, The Sea many years ago, which I can barely remember but know I struggled with, and a lesser known novel, A Word Child, which I really enjoyed. When picking another book by Murdoch for my new Classics Club list, then, I had plenty to choose from and decided on The Black Prince almost at random. I started to read it in March for Reading Ireland Month (although the book is set in England, Murdoch is an Irish author) but I had too many other books needing to be read at that time, so I put it aside and came back to it last week.

Published in 1973, The Black Prince is presented as a manuscript written by Bradley Pearson who has recently retired from his job as Inspector of Taxes to concentrate on his writing. Bradley’s book – an account of some life-changing events which occurred when he was fifty-eight years old – is framed by a foreword from his editor, P. Loxias, and a series of postscripts written by the other characters in the story. Although it’s easy to become absorbed in Bradley’s narrative and forget that it’s a book-within-a-book, the different perspectives we see at the end are a reminder that Bradley isn’t necessarily the most reliable of narrators and may not have been entirely honest with us. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the other characters are telling the truth either, so be prepared for a novel that’s ambiguous, thought-provoking and doesn’t tie everything up neatly at the end.

Bradley’s story begins as he decides to leave London for the summer and rent a cottage by the sea where he can work on his book in peace. Before he manages to depart, however, he is repeatedly delayed by a sequence of frustrating and unwelcome incidents. First, there’s an urgent telephone call from his friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a much more successful and popular author than Bradley himself. Arnold is convinced he has killed his wife, Rachel, so Bradley rushes to their house only to find that it’s a false alarm and Rachel is not dead after all. Bradley’s involvement in the Baffins’ domestic disputes, though, leads to Rachel believing she’s in love with him. Then, Bradley’s sister, Priscilla, arrives at his flat tearful and distraught; her marriage has broken up and she’s depressed and homeless. And a third woman has also reappeared in Bradley’s life – his ex-wife, Christian, who has just returned from America along with her annoying brother, Francis.

The first half of the novel deals with Bradley’s relationships with these people as he tries to disentangle himself from the various situations he’s become caught up in and I have to admit, at this point I was finding the book a bit tedious and didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. That changed halfway through when Bradley falls in love with the Baffins’ twenty-year-old daughter, Julian, who has been pleading with him to tutor her in classic literature, particularly Shakespeare. Needless to say, Arnold and Rachel are not happy when they find out – there’s a thirty-eight year age difference – but the ensuing drama makes the second half of the novel much more compelling than the first.

Before I started reading, I wasn’t sure of the relevance of the title. In history, the Black Prince refers to Edward of Woodstock, the eldest son of Edward III, but in the context of Murdoch’s novel, the reference is actually to Hamlet. The play is alluded to many times during the novel and specifically discussed by Bradley and Julian (it’s while Julian is describing how she once dressed in black to play Hamlet that Bradley discovers he’s in love with her). I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Bradley Pearson himself shares initials with the Black Prince. Other names are also significant, including P. Loxias, the name of the fictional editor – Loxias is another name for Apollo, the Greek god of truth and prophecy, very appropriate in a book that makes us question what is true and what isn’t. And I spotted other examples of symbolism throughout the novel, such as the bronze water buffalo lady, an ornament which is passed from one character to another and is broken and mended at various points in the story.

This is a fascinating novel, then, and although I found it slow to start, I had been drawn in by the middle of the book and was glad I’d persevered. I’ve also been left with a lot to think about; as I said, it’s all very ambiguous and there are lots of unanswered questions at the end. If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought.

This is book 3/50 from my third Classics Club list.

The Blind Woman of Sorrento by Francesco Mastriani

April 23, 20268 Comments

Translated by Idara Crespi

Francesco Mastriani is a completely new author for me – I’m sorry to say I hadn’t even heard of him until I was offered a review copy of his 1852 novel, The Blind Woman of Sorrento, but it seems he was a very prolific Italian writer, producing over two hundred works of fiction during the 19th century. Espresso Publishing House, an imprint focusing on neglected foreign-language novels, have made this one available in its first modern English translation.

The ‘blind woman’ of the title is Beatrice, daughter of the Marchese di Rionero. She wasn’t born blind, but at the age of three she witnessed the brutal murder of her mother and lost her sight due to the shock and trauma she suffered. Now, seventeen years later, an English doctor, Oliviero Blackman, has arrived in Sorrento and believes he can help her to see again. Unknown to Beatrice, however, Dr Blackman is not all he appears to be. Who is he and does he have another motive for promising to restore Beatrice’s sight?

We also get to know Gaetano Pisani, the son of the man who killed Beatrice’s mother all those years earlier. Gaetano’s life has also been affected by the events of that terrible night and he can’t escape the shame and guilt of knowing that his father was hanged for murder. When he crosses paths with his father’s accomplice and gets his hands on a box of jewels stolen from the murdered woman, it seems that he may still have a chance to find redemption.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot as I would prefer future readers to discover all the twists and turns of this fascinating novel for themselves, as I did. The publisher compares it to Wilkie Collins, which is a good comparison as this book does share many of the elements you would often find in Collins’ work and other 19th century sensation novels such as murders, stolen jewels, family secrets, revenge plots and hidden identities, as well as lots of melodrama! I was particularly reminded of Poor Miss Finch, which also deals with the subject of blindness in a similar way (although that book was published twenty years after this one and the plot itself is quite different). I also think if you’ve enjoyed books by authors like Alexandre Dumas or Rafael Sabatini, there’s a good chance you would enjoy this one too.

Although I would have preferred Beatrice to have been a stronger character (she has a tendency to faint and swoon), I did find it interesting to see how Mastriani writes about her blindness. For a book published in the 1850s, he handles the topic quite sensitively, never implying that she’s any less intelligent because of her condition – on the contrary, she is more observant and perceptive than most people, with her other senses being heightened to compensate. Gaetano is also a complex character: although his actions and motives are sometimes questionable, I could never really think of him as a villain, but at the same time he’s not entirely heroic either.

I found Idara Crespi’s translation very clear and easy to read and I appreciated the translator’s note at the beginning, explaining why certain words and spellings had been chosen. There’s also an introduction, which you can read before or after the novel itself (I got more out of it reading it afterwards), a glossary and some notes on historical Naples. Naples was Mastriani’s own place of birth and both that city and nearby Sorrento are vividly brought to life through his descriptions. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and was entertained by it from beginning to end.

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

September 19, 202522 Comments

I’m ashamed to say I had never come across this classic American children’s novel until Constance of Staircase Wit recommended it when I commented on one of her reviews that I would like to read more about life on New York’s Lower East Side. Constance kindly sent me a copy, which I have now read and enjoyed!

First published in 1951, the book follows five young sisters through a year of their childhood in 1912. Ella, at twelve, is the oldest and four-year-old Gertie is the youngest, with Henny (Henrietta), Sarah and Charlotte in between. They are known as an ‘all-of-a-kind family’ due to being all girls – or, as the librarian refers to them, a ‘step-and-stairs family’ because of their evenly spaced ages. They live in an apartment on the Lower East Side and Papa runs a junk shop nearby while Mama looks after the children and their home.

In the first chapter, Sarah is upset because a friend has borrowed her library book and lost it. She’s sure she’ll be in big trouble and banned from going to the library ever again. However, the librarian, Miss Allen, is sympathetic and, knowing that the family would be offended by charity, she agrees to let Sarah pay for the book one penny a week. Miss Allen becomes a good friend to the girls after this and we meet her again later in the book, but meanwhile there are lots of other adventures to be had – including making a fun game from dusting the apartment, going to the market with Mama, and getting lost at Coney Island.

This is such a charming book, I’m sure I would have loved it as a child. The five girls are all very endearing and Taylor gives them all individual personalities of their own. Ella, being nearly a teenager, is the most mature of the sisters and is beginning to form romantic attachments; ten-year-old Henny is independent and rebellious, while Sarah is more studious. The two youngest girls are less well developed, but Gertie, the baby of the family, looks up to Charlotte who is two years older and they have a particularly close relationship.

One of the most interesting things about this book is that the girls belong to a Jewish family, so we are given lots of descriptions of them preparing for Jewish holidays such as Purim and Passover (as well as celebrating the Fourth of July) – and because the girls are so young, Mama and Papa explain to them the meanings of each custom and tradition, which can be very helpful for non-Jewish readers! Not many of the books I remember reading as a child featured children who were anything other than Christian, so it’s good to know that this book existed even if I wasn’t aware of it.

This is a lovely book (and also the first in a series). Thanks to Constance for introducing me to it.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

August 4, 202525 Comments

Graham Greene’s 1951 novel, The End of the Affair, was one of the final unread books on my Classics Club list, which I’ve been neglecting recently. As I had left a few empty slots on my 20 Books of Summer list for random reads, I decided this would be a good opportunity to read it.

The End of the Affair is narrated by Maurice Bendrix, a writer living in London. As the title suggests, the novel begins at the end of an affair between Bendrix and neighbour Sarah, the wife of Henry Miles, a civil servant. It was Sarah who ended the relationship, leaving Bendrix confused, hurt and bitter. In January 1946, almost two years after the affair ends, Bendrix meets Henry by chance crossing the Common that separates their two houses. Henry never knew about the affair, but he now confides in Bendrix that he suspects Sarah is seeing another man. This revives Bendrix’s suppressed feelings for Sarah and he decides to hire a private detective to follow her and try to find out who her new lover is.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. Greene writes so convincingly about Bendrix’s regret for his lost love and the mixture of emotions it provokes in him: disappointment, anger, resentment and – after hearing Henry’s suspicions – jealousy. The private detective he employs, Alfred Parkis, is a wonderful character and I wished he’d played a bigger part in the book. Although he’s not particularly successful in his detecting, he’s so eager to please and to set a good example for his young son, Lance, that I found him very endearing. He also adds a touch of comedy to what is otherwise a very serious story.

In the middle of the novel, the focus switches to Sarah and through some passages from her diary, we see her side of the story and discover her reasons for ending the affair with Bendrix. I found the second half of the book less compelling as discussions of Catholicism, religious conversion and the existence of God begin to dominate. There are lots of interesting ideas being explored, but I felt that it completely changed the direction and the feel of the story I had previously been enjoying. Still, I liked the book overall, loved the quality of the writing and thought the 1940s setting was perfectly evoked.

This is the first book I’ve read by Graham Greene and maybe it wasn’t the best place to start with him, but I do want to read more. Any recommendations are welcome!