In an isolated farmhouse in the Jura, Claudine awaits her husband Renaud's return from a Swiss sanatorium. She distracts herself by encouraging her young friend Annie to recount salacious episodes from her love life. When Renaud's homosexual son Marcel arrives, Claudine sets about matchmaking, a fiasco she bitterly regrets. With Renaud's death, Claudine's ennui is transmuted into resigned suffering. But she gradually allows the rhythm and beauty of the natural world to reawaken her desire to live. Retreat From Love, first published in 1907, was the first of Colette's novels to be written without the collaboration of her husband 'Willy', from whom she had recently separated.
The final novel of the famous Claudine series, this book is filled with the luminous insights that mark Colette's later work. Retreat from Love tells of sexuality and love in a variety of forms. Translated and with an Introduction by Margaret Crosland.
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