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that was a slim volume written when colette was still under the wings of her first husband willy and i ve only recently managed to get hold of a copy the title in french is dialogues de bêtes rendered here in english by translator maire kelly as barks and purrs colette was known for her love of her animal companions and as you might gather one of these is a feline so the book was the perfect choice first published in 1904 purrs is an amusing work which reads rather like a playlet the characters are toby dog a french bulldog and kiki the demure a maltese cat also present are he and she described as the master and mistress but of minor importance and obviously representing colette and willy in six sections we witness the conversations between dog and cat against the background of the lives of the two paws as they are referred to and their characters are well defined from the start toby is definitely not the brightest button in the tin although he adores her and is incredibly loyal kiki in contrast is sharp and clever devoted to him and determined to outsmart toby when she can so they chat and wrangle discuss their owners worry when dinner is delayed are alarmed by storms and have hostile thoughts about a visiting animal travel upsets them both and when their mistress is ill their whole world is turned upside down but what s very clever about the way colette writes is that the narrative and the animals discussions reveals much about the human life going on around them we see willy scratching away on paper colette communing with nature and these little vignettes give quite a window onto how colette wanted to project the image of her life at the time what s also notable is how well colette captures the nature of both types of creature toby is solid loyal and well dog like kiki by contrast has all the qualities we re expect of a feline a little stand offish perhaps sneaky cruel when it comes to catching and eating other creatures and very full of himself however when it comes down to it he s just as dependent on the humans as toby is and both are lap creatures purrs is a charming and delightful read beautifully written and laced with colette s humour and wonderful descriptions as with the claudine books she was already capturing her love of nature and putting it into print and that element is present here too at this point colette and willy were very much still together they would separate in 1906 and colette had the claudine books already under her belt in 1907 s retreat from love she would perhaps try to finish that part of her life and move onto her own writing but here we get a lovely glimpse into what her married life might have been like as well as a portrait of her beloved animals and it s a treat a word on my edition of the book and i ll try not to rant about the fact that i think there needs to be a complete set of english translations of colette i picked this up on a on a few years back and i think it s one of those pod type books it s named as coming from dodo press but there s no real background information provided no detail about the translator and no credit for the lovely illustrations contained inside although i ve managed to gather a good collection of colette s work in translation it s often hard to track down some of the more obscure books and really it would be lovely to have a uniform set putting that aside though kiki is a wonderful creation and i m glad i got to encounter him and toby for reading the meow share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky like loading sharing some reactions to ulysses for bloomsday june 16 2026 kaggsysbookishramblings uncategorized bloomsday james joyce ulysses 57 comments june is a month where two significant works of literature are celebrated and i ve already taken part in one of these events with my last post on the genesis of virginia woolf s mrs dalloway however today is designated as bloomsday for the very good reason that james joyce s ulysses takes place over one day 16th june 1904 and the main protagonist of his story is one leopold bloom as i hinted in my end of may round up i have been spending time with a big significant book one that i had wanted to read for a long time and that is of course ulysses having completed my read of proust i figured this was the perfect moment and so i spent the end of may immersed in joyce s work and what a book it is now i realised that ulysses has possibly had more written about it than any other book going so that does beg the question as to what can i add to that discourse so i will simply share some of my responses to the book and what stood out from it for me plot wise the book as i said takes place over one day in dublin during which the characters move about the city and go about their business aside from bloom himself the son of a hungarian jew and an irish catholic the main focus is on stephen dedalus and molly bloom a singer and leopold s wife dedalus had previously appeared in joyce s other books and is considered i believe the alter ego of the author himself a young man working as a teacher his path through the city will cross with bloom s throughout the day until they meet up in one of the longer sections at the end of the night for some dramatic antics molly is a presence throughout ulysses but only makes a full appearance in the final section of the book anyway rather than attempt a coherent review here are some bullet points with some of my thoughts and i am very much scratching the surface ulysses 1040 pages in my edition is not the longest book i ve ever read but i would say it s very likely the the most complex this is very much to do with the experimental nature of the writing and the book s structure split into eighteen sections these apparently mirror the odyssey with bloom s voyage echoing that of ulysses himself i ll say more about the structure at the end of this post the style of the book varies dramatically in the different sections from relatively straightforward and lyrical prose to writing which comes close to that of finnegans wake there s much to take in section 15 known as circe is set out like a play script and is a raucous and energetic narrative where bloom and dedalus clash with a variety of colourful characters in contrast part 13 nausicaa is written in lyrical almost straightforward prose exploring an encounter by the sea of leopold and a young girl gerty macdowell although they never meet she has a dramatic effect on him from a distance and this is one of the less complex sections of the book to read nevertheless we do still see things from inside gerty s head continuing the stream of consciousness approach much of the story is presented as an interior monologue following the random nature of the thought process mostly that of bloom and this was no doubt groundbreaking at the time although woolf is regarded as at the forefront of this kind of writing i would say she s definitely more structured than joyce similarly dorothy richardson is now being credited for her stream of consciousness prose and although joyce takes this much further i would say she s closer to him than woolf one slightly disturbing element to the book is the anti semitism which bloom meets with on his journey around dublin snide and disparaging remarks from other characters are a regular reminder of the prejudice he faces despite having converted to catholicism on his marriage to molly on its first and i believe subsequent publication ulysses was prosecuted for obscenity so how does it read now well it s hardly pornographic yes it s earthy and scatological there is discussion of subjects such as masturbation copulation bodily functions menstruation and all things physical but the language is never graphic even the word arse is shown as a e in my copy i imagine joyce s focus on the physical was shocking and groundbreaking at the time but he was recording the reality of life in the city as he saw it and that s fine ah the city dublin itself is as much the main character as anyone or anything else in the book and i really understand why there are ulysses maps and trails round the city as i can imagine it would be enormous fun to trace the route of the characters joyce had been living abroad for some time when he began to recreate dublin from his memories and i believe many of the characters and settings are drawn from his own past no wonder the city celebrates him there is a thread running through the book relating to shakespeare and in particularly his play hamlet and i sensed a resonance between the playwright s loss of his young son and bloom s loss of his own child rudy there s a lot of discussion of shakespeare between the characters alongside all kinds of other intellectual political and religious ruminations and this is a fascinating aspect of the book molly bloom is often referenced with relation to ulysses and it s not hard to see why the final section her soliloquy is eight long unpunctuated paragraphs following her thought processes as she lies next to leopold in bed it s clear throughout the book that their marriage is in a rocky state their one surviving child milly has left home to go off to work leopold finds relief elsewhere when he can and molly is not faithful either yet as the monologue builds and comes to an end with molly recollecting how it was when she and leopold be came a couple the prose becomes stunningly hypnotic building to a powerful climax it s a masterpiece and finishes the book on a triumphant note it has to be said that ulysses is in no way an easy book to read the shifting in styles the long sinuous sentences and the incoherence of the narrative in that it reflects normal thought processes requires concentration additionally joyce invents plenty of words of his own which do mostly make sense and don t always have the effect of wake nevertheless more attention is needed here despite this it s most definitely worth reading as the prose often becomes mesmerising and there are passages of great beauty it s immersive absorbing funny scurrilous and really like nothing else i ve read needless to say i ended up with a massive book hangover did i understand all of it not by a long chalk ulysses is riddled with allusion and references and so i decided to simply read it for the story and the language i can go back later for a more studied reponse the timing was right for me to read this now and i m so glad i did happy bloomsday i wanted to add a little coda to this post about the edition of ulysses which i read this was a gift from mr kaggsy some years back and it s an attractive hardback edition which was published by o brien press in 2013 endorsed by the james joyce centre i think it differs a little from other editions an example of the illustrations for a start the book comes with b w illustrations of parts of the city by emma byrne and one of these is featured at the beginning of each of the 18 sections these are a nice addition and every one bears a time which presumably represents when the action in the section is taking place the text is taken from the 1922 first edition and comes with an introduction by joyce s grand nephew bob joyce who does confess that he s never read all of the book however i do have to apply a couple of caveats firstly i don t know think the original book was published with breaks or any kind of headings between parts apart from the fact it was divided into three sections i don t have an issue with the ones inserted here as it does punctuate the book a little but i thought it worth mentioning secondly there is literally no supporting material at all and your attitude towards this may depend i enjoyed reading it simply as it was first seen apart from what i ve said in the previous paragraph and didn t worry too much about the references quotes and allusions however i definitely feel that on a re read i would want notation of some kind even if i ignored some of it and i think i would go for an annotated edition next time there are small reproductions at the end of this edition of a list of changes joyce made to the original edition but this is frankly not a lot of use as a it s very small and b none of the page numbers match up with this copy the page size is quite small which is why the book comes out at over 1000 pages though the type is of reasonable size would i recommend this edition i m not sure to be honest although it s a nice hefty little hardback and the illustrations are a lovely bonus i think i would definitely want a slightly more scholarly issue with some supporting material as it was i found the wikipedia entry on the book to be a very useful tool whilst reading the book and if you have a simple edition of ulysses i suggest making use of that i enjoyed reading this one though so well done mr k for finding it for me to end i thought i would share one of my favourite tracks by the band jefferson airplane it comes from one of the first vinyl records i ever bought after bathing at baxters which i still love and in this song grace slick riffs on ulysses share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky like loading celebrating one of my favourite novels for dallowayday june 13 2026 kaggsysbookishramblings uncategorized dallowayday mrs dalloway virginia woolf 52 comments it s no secret that i m a huge fan of virginia woolf and i ve written before more than once no doubt about how mrs dalloway was a pivotal book in my life as well as sharing my thoughts on a re read as is known the story takes place over one day in june and there has been a dedicated dalloway day for some time now i m not sure this always on the same date but this year it s today 13th june now i ve always wanted to take part but i m not at the point of being able to re read mrs dalloway yet however it occurred to me that i had lurking on the tbr a rather interesting looking volume entitled mrs dalloway biography of a novel by mark hussey so i decided that reading this and sharing my thoughts on it would be ideal for this year s dalloway day in the biography hussey a professor of english at pace university new york traces the genesis writing publication and reception of woolf s fourth novel and it does make fascinating reading mrs dalloway was very much a product of its time reflecting the post ww1 world which was full of rapid changes the war had caused many fractures in society with the old norms starting to break down and the circle in which clarissa dalloway moved was in some ways out of date hussey reveals how the after effects of the fighting fed into the novel as well as discussing how woolf drew on her own mental health issues which informed the portrayal of her character septimus smith mrs dalloway is a great war novel an 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