Pure and the Impure

Lyrical, allusive, sometimes obscure, yet precise, The Pure and the Impure has elicited equal parts consternation and praise since its publication nearly 100 years ago. Colette herself was unequivocal: “I believe it to be my best book.” Through strikingly vivid and evocative portraits, many of them of her friends and lovers, Colette explores varieties of sexual expression, gender identity, love and sensual pleasure. Decades ahead of its time in contemplating queerness and women’s sexuality, The Pure and the Impure provides a fascinating window into the sexual demimondes of the Parisian Belle Époque: We meet cross-dressing lesbians, a sapphic poet, Don Juans male and female, the circle of gay men whose companionship saw Colette through the difficult years of her first marriage and Colette’s onetime lover Missy—La Chevalière—who might today be a transgender man. At the same time, the book offers a unique portrait of a complex and often contradictory character: Colette herself. The “brilliantly ingenious” (Lydia Davis) translator Rachel Careau offers readers a lean, elegant and highly readable rendition that reproduces Colette’s extraordinary musicality, making her “perfect, lapidary and truth-bearing sentences” (Terry Castle) sing for English readers. Rachel Careau’s translation of Colette’s Chéri and The End of Chéri was praised as:“This heartbreaking, astute pair of novels…are among the best of [Colette’s] vast, impressive canon.” – The New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice"Both novels are exquisite in structure, sparse and lacy, every detail in a web of other details, merciless, precise." – Jenny Turner, London Review of Books