Colette

So it is a completely delightful little school story set in rural France in Burgundy, I think.

It's based on the life of the writer Colette.

And Claudine is, she's such a feisty, charming, fun heroine.

She's 15 at the start of the series because there's a few books, but this is my favorite one.

So it was huge.

So even the word Claudine sort of became the definition of a witty, modern, rebellious woman.

But what is annoying is that Colette's husband, Willie, he encouraged her to write the book and then he published it and took the credit and said he wrote it himself.

No.

Did you miss me last week? To start things off, I want to send out a belated birthday shout out to my Aunt Becky Leder, whose birthday was September 3rd, but then I kind of forgot to mention it on my August 27th show.

Oops! I also want to give a belated congratulations to my cousin, Alex Leder's son Mateo, who recently started his first year of college at Columbia.

Congratulations.

I also forgot to mention on August 27th that yesterday happened to be Adam Sandler's 60th birthday, as well as being Cape Cod musician Kim Oberg's daughter Rachel's birthday and Cape Cod musician Kathleen Healy's wedding anniversary.

The enormous Engman family loves and misses you so much, Gawky.

In fact, tomorrow I'm going to be having a burger in your honor and doing two of your favorite films on tomorrow's mini episode.

I want to give a two-day early September 12th birthday shout out to my cousin, Fitzy Smiths, acting-loving daughter Colette of Alameda, California.

For her birthday gift on tomorrow's mini-episode, I'll be talking about one of her favorite musicals.

So it's, you know...

When I first read this, there's a French author by the name of Colette who wrote these books about a protagonist named Claudine who was plucky and smart and went against the grain.

This is in the 1800s, right? Mm-hmm,

mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I think that word, kind of being contemporary, having those contemporary concerns, I find it quite interesting that in reviews at the time, apparently she was linked up with people like Colette and François Sagan and all these quite scurrilous, erotic, wild women or whatever, that kind of thing.

But I quite like this phrase that some of the reviewers said she was faulted for an excess of contemporaneity.

Is that right? How do you say it?

She was also in Killing Eve and Fleabag.

Her movie about female furs, Colette.

A movie about Colette.

She went by that name.

The first major female French novelist to challenge male dominance.

And I think that your stories do that really, really beautifully.

In fact, and I don't know if I've ever said this to anyone before, but I mean, they have, because this is my idol, but they have a very strong Colette vibe to them.

And Colette is one of my favorite authors of short fiction.

I mean, she does some beautiful long fiction as well.

But they're...

And on that end...

I'm so pleased to hear you say that.

If I'm like Colette, which I really...

Well, my sister had died, okay? My sister CeCe, the middle sister, she passed.

Sidonie Colette.

We all have French names.

S- um, CeCe's named after Colette.

CeCe passed away in 2014.

That was devastating.