Excerpt from "The Blue Lantern"

1949
Colette, translated by Elaine Marks
Excerpt from The Blue Lantern
B-

It's somehow fitting that the last of Colette's works I own, from almost the last thing she published, ends with "To be continued...."  The nearly 50-year span of her writing that we've covered has been wildly uneven, but I can't say that it hasn't been an interesting ride.  And what's most notable about her and her characters (except the ones that commit suicide) is that they always go on, their sparks of life impossible to extinguish.  Colette herself lived to 81, still writing, and still outrageous.  This last piece tells of herself as an old woman shivering before the fire, but there's a memory of a prize-winning reader, "at twelve and a half years of age, Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette."  That madcap but clever tomboy lived on inside the sophisticated writer.

Just taking the works of Gigi and Selected Writings, there are a B+, 3 B's, 6 B-s, 2 C+s, a C-, and a D, but of course these are various lengths.  A B- for the overall grade feels fair though.