More than a hundred years have passed since the publication of this little wonder called Chéri (1920) and, as if it were a watch built by Switzerland's most competent professional, there's nothing that doesn't work: the provocation, the sensuality, the irony, the mordacity, the intelligence, the social criticism, and the psychological depth that the great Colette (1873-1954) was capable of. The book holds up not only because the story of love and passion between a woman approaching fifty and the son of one of her friends, who is not even twenty-five, is still unconventional. It holds up, above all, because of the French writer's abilities: the natural perfection of the dialogues, the subtlety of each gesture of the characters, the acute sense of reality demonstrated by each of the observations made by the narrative voice, and the progression of events, which is studied to the millimeter and leaves out of the frame crucial moments of the, or more than just the, lovers' unbridled love.