5 h 54 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if everything you think you know about love comes from people who tell you almost nothing?
Minne is bright, restless, and sure she understands the grown-up world. In Colette’s The Innocent Libertine, this young Parisian builds her ideas of love from gossip, half-heard conversations, and daydreams. She longs for pleasure and admiration, but knowing what she wants is another matter.
Around her, middle-class Paris treats marriage as a bargain shaped by money, manners, and position. Minne’s curiosity presses against those settled rules. With sensual detail and irony, Colette explores the gap between what a young woman imagines, what society allows, and what she has yet to learn about herself.
What you’ll discover
- Confidence meets curiosity Meet Minne, whose certainty about love sits beside questions she cannot yet answer.
- Marriage behind the manners Look past polite expectations to a world where families weigh money and social position.
- Wanting is not knowing Explore the distance between the desire for pleasure and an understanding of yourself.
- A world you can feel Savour Colette’s sensuous, exact prose and her close attention to small physical details.
- Irony without a sermon Follow a young woman’s search without expecting a simple moral lesson to settle her questions.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy vivid portraits of Paris, sharp comedy about manners, and stories that follow a young woman's mind from daydreams to marriage, told in rich, sensuous detail.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A schoolgirl dreams of the gangs
- A sleeping stranger becomes a hero
- Summer at the Dry House
- A lover who exists only in her mind
- One night on the fortifications
- Morning, and a door that opens
- A married woman in search of one thing
- Ice, a hunter, and a bald friend
- What the book is about, and how it is told
Who’s who
- MinneA pale, dark-eyed girl with silvery hair who dreams of danger and a romantic outlaw, and later searches for a pleasure she cannot find.
- AntoineMinne's cousin and later her husband, a tall, awkward, honest man who loves her without condition and works restoring ancient instruments.
- MamaMinne's young widowed mother, who lives only for her daughter and sees her as a fragile white mouse.
- Uncle PaulA doctor with a bad liver, Antoine's father and Mama's brother, who is gruff, sarcastic and distrustful of Minne.
- Jacques CoudercA young baron of twenty-two who falls hard in love with Minne and cannot accept that she does not love him.
- MaugisA portly journalist and novelist with a large mustache, who flirts with Minne and surprises her by treating her with tenderness.
- Irène ChaulieuA small, gaudy society hostess who calls herself the most malicious woman in Paris and loves to gossip and provoke.
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- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 5 h 54 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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La ingenua libertina
by Colette · 1909
Minne, a schoolgirl in Paris, dreams of a gang queen's life and a sleeping stranger on Boulevard Berthier.
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In short
The Innocent Libertine is a novel by Colette, first published in the early years of the twentieth century. It follows Minne, a pale, dark-eyed girl in Paris, from her fourteenth year into her early marriage.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A schoolgirl dreams of the gangs
The story opens on Boulevard Berthier, in the small house where Minne lives with her widowed mother. Mama sews by the fire while Minne bends over her history homework. Under the notebook she hides a newspaper column about gangs of Apaches, the street toughs of the outer boulevards. One of them is a red-haired girl called Copper Helmet.
Minne is fourteen and tall for her age, with silvery hair and serious dark eyes. Mama thinks of her as a fragile white mouse, a child who goes to bed at half past nine. Minne lets her think so, out of a kind of pity. In her mind she is already a queen of the fortifications, with a red ribbon in her hair.
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What is The Innocent Libertine about?
It follows Minne, a Paris girl who invents romantic fantasies about street gangs, and then her early marriage to her cousin Antoine, as she searches for a pleasure and a love that she cannot seem to find.
Who wrote The Innocent Libertine and when?
The novel was written by the French author Colette in the early years of the twentieth century. She is known for her close observation of feeling, her sensuous detail and her portraits of Parisian life.
Who is Minne in the novel?
Minne is the young heroine, a girl with pale silver hair and dark eyes who lives in Paris with her mother. She is imaginative and secretive, and she is later married to her cousin Antoine.
The author
Colette
1873–1954 · French novelist
Colette was a French novelist born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in 1873. She later lived in Paris, where she died in 1954. Her novels include Chéri, published in 1920, and The Ripening Seed, published in 1923. She also wrote Sido, published in 1930, and worked as a journalist and stage performer.
More by Colette
All 4 booksMore like this
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