I love the cover of this book. What a strange and unusual life they had, interesting and sad.

A must-read for Saint Ex fans.

Having read all of Saint Exupery's books, this was the perfect finish to the journey. Engrossing, enlightening and very sad for me, as I realized that my childhood hero that in part inspired me to become a pilot, had feet of clay.

heartbreaking

Ach, ta meilė :) ko iš jos nepadarysi. Bet skaitant šią knygą sukosi dvi mintys galvoje. Viena apie tai, ką visgi gali bandyti suprasti tik stipriai mylėdamas pats - kai tavo mylimasis toks arogantiškas, savininkiškas, neištikimas, o tu vis tiek bėgi paskui. Ir kita. Daug kas dievina "Mažąjį princą" (aš ne). Bet ar tikrai taip bus ir paskaičius žmonos memuarus? Manau, tikrai ne. Tad visgi herojai tegul lieka atokiau, perdaug iš arti pažinus juos, galima stipriai nusivilti.

An interesting look at the women who inspired a classic piece of fiction and the relationship she had with said author

I can't believe that I've discovered this book just now!!! I've cried a several times in The Little Prince, now knowing there was actually a sequel. I need to find this book!!

- minor editing done -

"...One never ought to listen to flowers, one should only look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace... the fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her....."


How to rate this one, being such a personal,unique tale?
For style of writing I would say a 3.5 but for what it showed me i will give it a 5.


I doubt there´s that many people around that haven't heard of Saint Exupery and his Little Prince tale - the aviator stranded in the desert that meets a young prince on a voyage across the stars - and of this young prince´s devotion/love for his rose, the most beautiful perfect rose in the universe, that he cant live with/ without.
Well, did you know that the rose is real?Yes, she is....or was.

The inspiration for this rose came from Antoine Saint-Ex (as his friends called him), from his life and his very intense relationship with his wife - Consuelo.

The tale of the rose is precisely what its tittle says - the rose (Consuelo) tells her tale of how she met this larger than life character, how she loved him, was loved, was abandoned and picked up again..and again...and again..till the one faithful day when the aviator left on his airplane for one more trip and never came back.

Thus the rose was left to spend the rest of her life remembering, writing this tale that began as a letter to him 2 years after his disappearance, and preserving the memory of her Tonio (as she called him).

The manuscript was found only after Consuelo´s death, she had written it down and put it aside - to painful?too much?...one can only wonder.

My own reaction to reading this was at first, from my 2017 couch, astonishment, fury, anger, frustration - how could a woman, any woman, put up with all the affairs, the ups and downs of Antoine´s character, the lack of money, the never ending roaming from place to place since the day they met in Buenos Aires in 1930 to the day they said goodbye in New York in the spring of 1944?

I found myself hating him,him!! the creator of one of my all time favorite stories! I wanted to punch him in the face for being so selfish and hurting her so much, and to slap her hard so she would snap out of it and leave him for good...but can I really judge? can anyone of us?

So what you have here dear reader, should you choose to try this one, is a tale of love, of passion, of pain, sadness, obsession and misery all thrown together in the shape of a man and a woman who I do believe shared a deeply strong bond and who, to a certain extent, were always there for each other - in Consuelo´s case beyond his death.

This may not fit the pattern of a "healthy/normal" relationship, but who are me and you to judge what makes our fellow Man happy?...as long as no one gets killed, its really none of our business.

Some people come into this world only briefly, to show us something, to makes us feel more than what many times we allow ourselves to feel. They shine bright, so so bright and suddenly, they are gone.

Life with a genius is never easy, never simple and straightforward...it am not saying he should be excused, but I do believe Consuelo in the end had no regrets and I applaud her courage and honesty in telling it all and leaving it behind so we would get to know The Tale of the Rose....


Extra Note - Saint Exupery disappeared somewhere over the Mediterranean in July 1944, his body and airplane were never found but, in 1998, a diver in the Mediterranean Sea recovered a bracelet inscribed "Antoine/Consuelo" ......

Happy Readings!

She was the rose and he was her prince.

Still, when The Little Prince traveled, he found there were more roses, unlike what she had told him. Saint-Exupery was certainly not a Disney prince, sand the two did not have the most dreamy relationship. Yet there is a sprinkle of dance hidden in these pages, a waltz of a storyteller creating a world. Consuelo's artistic way of detailing her marriage with the famous author and aviator kept me interested and thoughtful throughout the book. She almost wrote it in the same way Saint-Ex wrote Night Flight for her, barely addressing the idea that the words may be part of a letter.

Though I do have to say...Saint-Ex was a jerk. There, I said it.

In this book Consuelo de Saint Exupéry tells the story about her stormy marriage to the famous Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. My God! What a mess! Antoine is a womanizer of the first degree, but at the same time he apparently wants to maintain his marriage to Consuelo. Antoine is a total chaotic, he all the time fly around, crashes and gets seriously wounded, move around all over the world and have innumerable affairs with other woman, especially after he becomes a global household name. But he must have been a great man because he has an electricising effect on other people. He seems like a funny mixture of something really lovingly and tender and at other times appear like a sheer psykopat. There is definitely an heroic air about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He is a warrior and his flights are really dangerous, atleast time after time he crashes. Consuelo and Antoine live in a circle of famous friends: Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Greta Garbo, Marcel Duchamp, etc. And Antoine is a celebrity. Consuelo spend much of the time waiting for Antoine who is always go somewhere else, she is always filled with her love towards him and often frustration, she seems a bit hysteric and at times she is also at a sanatorium in Switzerland. A cool thing I will remember from the book is when Consuelo wants to paint her and Antoines new apartment in Paris. Consuelo wants the color of the walls to be exactly like the color of water in a bathtub. So they invite their artist friends to come and find just the right color. And who finds the right color? Well - Marcel Duchamp of course!

The Little Prince has always been and will always be my favourite story. The book showed me a different insight to what the book sprouted from but what it is suppose to mean belongs to me and only me. For me, The Tale of Rose is a story of a foul love story decorated with the beautiful words of Consuelo. I cried for her three attempts to escape and also, for my mother who she reminded me of. I hoped within all my power, which obviously knew I would never change the past, that Tonio will come home and stay but he always strayed. It kills me to think that a women of such strength was hidden behind a tall man. She was not just a rose with thorns. She was a strong women who was also meant for the stars. It pains me to think that she called herself a cage for a bird like Tonio when all along, she would have also flown.

Consuelo certainly was the thorny rose which Saint-Exupery depicted in his wonderful book, The Little Prince. VJP

TW: emotional abuse, gaslighting