Novel
Green Wheat
Le Blé en herbe
Colette · 1923
Opening lines
—-Tu vas à la pêche, Vinca?
“Are you going fishing, Vinca?”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Phil, sixteen, and Vinca, fifteen, spend their holidays together every summer in Brittany, near Cancale. They have known each other since childhood, but that summer something has changed between them. An older woman, Mme Dalleray, nicknamed the lady in white, draws him to her home and gives him his sentimental education. Vinca guesses what is happening and suffers from it.
Context
The novel was written on the author's Breton estate, at Saint-Coulomb, near Cancale. It first appeared as a serial in Le Matin, whose literary pages she then ran, from the summer of 1922; the newspaper broke it off in March 1923 in the face of readers' complaints, who were shocked less by the mature woman than by what was blossoming between the two adolescents. The volume appeared from Flammarion in July 1923. Claude Autant-Lara made a film of it in 1954, which in its turn caused a scandal.
Who it is for
A short novel, in dense and highly wrought language, rich in rare words and sensations.
Prizes and reception
The novel appeared in English under several titles, from The Ripening Corn in 1931 to Green Wheat, Zack Rogow's version, in 2004.
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