What is the author's style in The Collected Stories of Colette by Colette?

While Colette's stories tend to be rather accessible, this is mostly through the large amount of dialogue she includes. The translations of the short stories in this collection also make the speakers sound remarkably timeless and easy to follow. However, in more descriptive passages, Colette often plays with complex and beautiful language. She uses a mixture of long and short sentences, but even her short sentences tend to have complex structures. The mixture of description with dialogue creates stories that are very readable and enjoyable for a modern reader. While she can use some slang from the time period, her translators work this easily into the body of the story, and nothing stands out as inappropriate. Overall, however, her characters tend to use the language of their social classes. For example, the dancers at the music hall are blunter and use slightly more vulgar language than their upper-class counterparts. Colette is an expert at matching the correct vocabulary to the correct class, and her characters illustrate this in a variety of different ways. Moreover, even Colette's child characters are represented in a true-to-life way. When her daughter or her goddaughter speak, for example, they tend to be forthright and precocious, while still being believable as children.