The novel tells of a fictitious affair of the heart, so unimaginable, so bizarre, so utterly outré that no one at the time had the faintest idea of its occurrence; (nor would have given it a minute’s credence even had a whiff of rumour ever manifested itself). Maurice Ravel was both a musician and a composer, whose creativity rose above the classical and modernist, somehow managing to synthesise both into a singular style, simultaneously exciting and opaque. Yet his persona was under-developed, childlike in many respects, while sexually, he was, what Nietzsche might have described as, a creature ‘yet to be formed’. On the other hand, Colette was a gregarious, outgoing habitué of Paris society and in many ways his polar opposite, a popular writer of stories who had made her own way in the world of musical theatre, and already had two marriages behind her.
If ever two opposites had no right to attract it was this pair; so how this affair worked its way into a professional collaboration, uncommon in itself, and somehow worked its way out again to a resolution all of its own, can only now be told, and wondered at!
