A great story of love and the crazy things it makes one do. The enigmatic and selfish personality of Antoine is placed in the open and Consuelo endures through it all because of love. We have all done crazy things in the name of love so I'm not the one to judge and times were different back then. It's a good narrative into their lives and the times. If you like The Little Prince then this is definitely worth a read.

Qué decepción. Fue una lectura muy difícil porque tenían una relación muy tóxica llena de infidelidad, manipulación, violencia emocional y psicológica. Es muy triste ver la realidad de una persona que admirabas. Aún así me encanta El Principito y es uno de mis libros favoritos, pero jamás volveré a pensar del autor de la misma manera. Es triste. Le pongo dos estrellas porque me gusta poder conocer la historia de Consuelo y el lado real, humano de un autor tan reconocido (aunque sea una realidad cruel).
También, me llamó la atención descubrir que el autor quería hacer una segunda parte de El Principito, aunque esto se menciona al final y muy brevemente.

No me gustó porque es la historia de una relación tóxica en más de 300 páginas. Constantes separaciones, mentiras, infidelidades, manipulaciones que se justificaban o perdonaban hasta el final. Incluso él la mandó a “curarse” a una clínica a Suiza, pero cuando ella le escribía que se estaba muriendo de hambre y tenía que robar pan, él la ignoraba. Acciones así suceden a lo largo de toda la novela.

Pienso que este libro es una lección sobre cómo no idolatrar a los artistas por sus obras y también el no sentirnos menos en comparación a otros, porque en realidad no sabemos las circunstancias ni la vida del otro, y por lo tanto todos somos capaces de crear obras de arte bellísimas.

I enjoyed The Tale of the Rose. Consuelo de Saint Exupery is a lyrical writer in her own right who lived in the shadow of her husband. Perhaps some credit is attributable to the English language translator. Most autobiographical accounts offer sympathetic self-portrayals, however this account is sufficiently factual, and equally generous in its portrayal of all characters that it reads as a very genuine and credible personal history. That Consuelo never sought to publish this, but wrote this privately as a memoir (published posthumously) further convinces that this was never an exercise in literary reputation management.

Consuelo is perhaps most known as Antoine’s muse for the rose in Le Petit Prince; a beautiful but difficult, or prickly, object of the prince’s love. This story suggests the real love story was of a different dynamic. Consuelo knows her mind, is equal parts realist and romantic, and while enamoured with Antoine’s eccentricities and child like excitement for change and adventure, she often is let down by him. Her generosity of spirit is to always love the childish enthusiasm in Antoine that drives him to become distracted and neglect her emotional needs. I love the concept of Helens razor, of never attributing to malice what one can attribute to stupidity; perhaps Consuelo’s razor is to never attribute to malice what can be attributed to the inner child (which Antoine was 100%).

A central feature of this relationship cleavage was the Consuelo always waiting for Antoine, while Antoine was always flirting with death on his flights; once crashing into the Mediterranean within view of Consuelo, other times crashing in the Libyan desert and walking for four days before finding bedouins who brought him back to civilization. For him this was life, for her it was constant anxiety.

When they were together in Paris he was constantly in the spotlight and loved the female attention his fame brought him; she felt unloved. There was still tenderness around this tension; when she’d express unhappiness he usually wouldn’t reproach her or become defensive, he’d seek forgiveness and try anything to make her happy. When she was happy he’d get distracted by his adventurism again and so the cycle went. Later he became more distant and bitter, eventually revealing he was in love with his mistress and didn’t wish to live with Consuelo… though in this too he was inconsistent.

I’m happy to have learn about Consuelo. Her life was complicated and marked by tragedy; she lost too soon multiple husbands, of course including Antoine in his plane crash. But consuellos life should also be a source of envy, because there was passion, travel, luxury, and she shared a portion of her life in proximity to artistic genius, a gift that she appreciated entirely.

After reading her memoir I’m left wondering how many unsung auteurs lived quietly in the shadows, their stories hidden in trunks, or how few people would ever write any type of memoir on 2022, let alone be sufficiently practiced writers for it to be enjoyable reading to a wider public. Different times.

Some readers might be disappointed that it’s only in the final 20 pages that the writing of the little Prince begins. But the pages are excellent as Consuelo tells the story of the house in New York, where friends posed for illustrations and then finding themselves, frustratedly, illustrated as an animal or flower. Consuelo never responds to Antoine’s use of her as his muse of the rose.

The story ends with the last letter Consuelo sent to Antoine, with no real postscript about her life after his death. But the most melancholic passage is in the introduction:

“I always tremble when I open the files or trunks where my husbands letters, drawings or telegrams are piled. Those yellowing pages, spangled with tall flowers and little princes are faithful witnesses to a lost happiness whose grace and privileges I value more strongly every year.”

The author of this memoir had already been widowed twice when she fell in love with and married the aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, so a person might assume that she might have brought a certain world-weary pragmatism to the marriage. But this was not the case. The two of them were madly in love with love, but turned out to be badly prepared for the strains that a career spent in the air would place on them as a couple. This was at a time when aviators such as Lindbergh and Earhart were world celebrities associated with daring and glamour and a lust for freedom, and her husband was part of this elite circle. Accidents and losses were not too uncommon then, so every transcontinental trip or mail route held the threat they would never see one another again. At the same time, as a celebrity and a member of a noble family, (Consuelo assumed the title of Comtesse by marrying him), there were plenty of other women attracted to the dashing pilot, ones she knew about and ones she did not. Added to this tension was a series of wrenching moves between South America, Africa, and Europe because of the job and a habit of breakups followed by extravagant professions of contrition which she never failed to escape. Also the matter of a World War with a need for aviators. It's not long before the reader becomes agitated at what Consuelo has described as her lot in life, and is hoping that she would just separate for good, after the next betrayal or near fatal crash or display of selfish callousness, but she never does. It is one of those made love affairs impossible for those on the outside to comprehend, especially in the present time with the relations between men and women so different from decades ago. It does not end happily, either, making the reading experience even more frustrating (though anyone picking up the book probably knows this from the start). I think the only way I could appreciate this memoir is just as a glimpse of a psychology I cannot succeed in understanding rationally. People still link up nowadays because of powerful magnetic attraction not based in reason, and maybe all of these are as aware of their misery the same way the author describes she was of hers, and unable to free themselves of it. Every relapse of the old obsession demonstrates how addictive the emotion is for such sufferers. The image of her husband does not come off well in the end, tragic as his disappearance turns out (not described in these pages), so it can come as a shock for those who loved his books. I was one of those who admired the childlike sense of wonder who felt betrayed to know that there was a less rosy side to his character.

Never meet your heroes.

This is a horrible tragic read written by the author of "The Little Prince" wife.

I love the book The Little Prince but I wish I never knew anything about the author. He was a selfish horrible man.

Interesting perspective about the author of The Little Prince. What he has to say about love in his book - seems less wonderful when you read about him through the eyes of his wife. I suppose that's life...

TCL Call #: 848.91 Saint-Exupery

This is the memoir of the woman who inspired the rose in the Little Prince. I'm not sure if it's because she wrote it in French even though her native tongue is Spanish that caused the stories to seem abrupt and disjointed. I surely would be writting funny if I tried to switch to Spanish right now. I almost never read a book's introduction but I am glad I did in this instance as it pointed out that fact:

"A year or two after Antoine's disappearance [on a reconnaissance mission over Nazi-occupied France:],Consuelo began to write a letter of her own, a very long letter, telling the story of their marriage. Perhaps she wrote it in French, which was always harder for her than her native Spanish, because she was writing it for him, and his Spanish was never very good."

In the end it is passionate whirlwind of a story of "the Rose" who is mysteriously desired by the poets and artists she meets in an extraordinary time in Paris. Her romance to Antoine occurs upon the instance of their meeting and in fact he proposes that day.

I gave it two stars because I found it difficult to read. The people seem insane but is that because of the times or because ot the translation or because they actually were out and out nuts. Either way it's worth a perusal but from a distance.

A story of two people who most definitely should’ve gotten divorced.

The book gave somewhat a new viewingpoint of the life of the author and of the book Little Prince.

Weird, I was going to say lovestory, but maybe still more just a story...

Beautiful and heartbreaking.

This unique autobiography had candor and some truly lovely writing. It filled in gaps for me in both early airmail delivery as well as giving some texture to the husband’s motivation in writing “The Little Prince.”

One mystery to me, as I read some of the reviews, was how do some readers view autobiographies?

Is it my “duty” to disagree with someone’s life choices and lifestyle?

Is offering criticism of a person’s revealing narrative a review or just an opportunity to reveal oneself to be on a higher plane?

I would not have wanted to live Consuelo de Saint Exupery’s life. However, I think she had the human right to live it, make her choices and be judged more on the writing of her autobiographical story than on her life experiences.

Yes, she did seem capricious, and a bit like a rare flitting exotic bird, but she definitely owned her story. I was glad to have read about her world and experiences.