Category: Belgium

Betty by Georges Simenon

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Betty by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title -Betty

Translator – Ros Schwarz

Source – Library book

I mentioned the other day, in a post from Karen, that there is a group of writers you can nearly always rely on for the club year: Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, and Georges Simenon. In Simenon’s case, there are often two or three books every year.  That was the case for 1961, and I had a quick look at the library system and saw they had Betty. I am more a fan of his Roman Durs, his hard novels, as they are called. I love Maigret, but the psychological depth of these harder novels and their characters often jump off the page. So picked this as my 1961 choice for Simenon.  Betty is an unusual tale; it is about how life sometimes takes odd twists and turns.

It wasn’t her drinking that was causing offence. The proof was that the owner himself had called Joseph the first time, and others were drinking as much if not more than her. A young woman with mousey hair on the corner of a banquette was deathly pale, her head lolling back, and her companion, who was holding her hand romantically, did not appear to be paying any attention to her.

What would happen if Betty began to shout? She was tempted to do so, to find out, to stir things up, so that someone would take notice of her, not just stare at her.

Betty is fallen into a bottle early on in the film

Betty is a woman on a bender. She has divorced her husband, who was a na from. another class when they married, and her daughters as well. She is on the verge of oblivion, falling into the bottle and not finding her way back out. But then she is saved by a mysterious woman named Laure and taken to a small hotel in the countryside. She manages to recover, and as we start to discover more about Betty’s life.  She was a working-class girl who met a man from an upper-class French family, and they married. But as we find out more, Betty is a drinker and takes lovers, so her husband and his family make her sign a divorce and lose rights to her daughters. Laure, a drinker as well, had escaped a marriage to her surgeon-husband and has a lover, Mario, who owns a restaurant. But what happens when she discovers that Betty isn’t the woman she first thought she was? This explains the million francs she had in her purse and why she is now looking at Mario.  This is about class, drinking, and females being more promiscuous.  This was the start of the seventies. It is also about how things can seem very different; Betty and Laure’s views have changed over the course of the book.

The room she was in hadn’t been aired for several days and it smelled fusty. Not the bland fustiness of a town, but the damp-hay smell of the countryside. When, a little earlier, the concierge and the porter had wanted to turn the lights on, the dark-haired woman had said:

‘No! She mustn’t have too much light. Leave me alone with her. Just open the communicating door into my room.” The men’s footsteps had faded away. Betty was lying on a bed, on top of the covers. The woman had gone off into the adjoining room where, from the noises she made, it sounded as if she was making herself comfortable. Was she afraid that Betty might throw up over her dress or tear it, clutching on to her?

Betty as she is taken to the Hotel by Laure

I was thinking as I read this book it would make a great film as it feels like a film script, almost it has a pacing that would suit a film as things slowly become clearer over the course of book as the views of the two female characrters shifgt as we discover more about Betty a woman that seems feted she say but is she or more a victiim of her own problems that at first seem in the book. It was made into a film in 1992 by Claude Chabrol, a director whose films I have seen over the years I had a quick look, and it doesn’t seem to be on a streaming service but has been on a dvd box set at one time so maybe if there is a new box set or I see the old one I may watch the film. It is a book about the little things that happen over time. It is a slow-burning account of Betty’s life told in pieces, and as we learn more, the situation between the two women changes. I’m pleased I picked this as I may not have got to it quickly, as I tend to pick Simenon books as I see them at the moment, second hand or when there are a few for a year like this. Do you have a favourite Roman Durs by Him?

 

 

Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon

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Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – Maigret et le client du Samedi

Translator – Siân Reynolds

Source – Library book

Well, it is a late entry to the 1962 club. I had got this and another Maigret published in 62 from the library, but as ever, my dreams are always bigger than what my personal reality can do as a reader, although I finished this Sunday night I just hadn’t got chance to write it up this morning. I don’t know what else to add about Simenon I have read so many of his books on the blog. But I love how he plays with the form of the detective novel. At times this is an example, or is it just a coincidence?

‘Pretend to what?

“To look after me. To be my wife.

Was he regretting having come? He was shifting about on the chair, occasionally looking at the door as if he were about to bolt outside.

Im wondering if I wasn’t wrong to come. But you’re the only man in the world I can trust . . . It seems as if I ve known you a long time. I’m almost sure you’ll understand.’

‘Are you a jealous husband, Monsieur Planchon?

Their eyes met. Maigret thought he could see complete frankness in the other man’s expression.

Not any more, I think. I was. But no. Now, Im past that ..?

‘But you want to kill her just the same?

He has turned to Maigret the one man he trusts to know how he feels

The book follows the events of a painter and decorator with a hare lip. HE turns up one Saturday whilst Maigret is on his way home, the man Leonard Planchon talks to him. The two talk for a time, and he gets the man’s life, how he is a painter and decorator, how he meets his wife Renee and how he had taken on an employee to help him with his work. This man, Roger Prou, over time, has become more involved in Leonard’s life. He eventually moves into his home, and at this point, he feels his wife and Roger are having an affair, and he has come to tell Maigret he wants to kill them. He is told to talk to Maigeret every day, and when he stops calling, he has to find out more when Renee says Leonard had passed his business to Roger and left with a suitcase. At this point, he tries to find out what has happened to this man he had spoken at length to. Where is Leonard? What happened between that last call and them visiting his house? He gets his usual team to start and trace those last few days and what has been happening in the house, and where Leonard had been the last few hours.

On Monday morning, Janvier and Lapointe, using methods bordering on the illegal, had gone to Rue Tholoze, where under Renée’s suspicious gaze they had looked in every room, pretending to take measurements.

In the late afternoon, Leonard Planchon had telephoned him at Quai des Orfèvres from a café on Place des Abbesses, or so he said, and Maigret had certainly overheard voices, glasses clinking and the sound of a till.

The man’s last words had been: Well, thank you,

anyway.

He hadn’t mentioned taking a trip, nor given any hint at all of suicide. It was on the Saturday that he had vaguely mentioned that solution, which he was rejecting, so as not to leave Isabelle in the care of Renée and her lover.

When he has disappeared then Maogret and his usual gang decide to find out what has happened to Leonard.

I loved how he twisted the way this story went. A murder that didn’t happen is mentioned, and then the potential murderer has disappeared. it has a classic murder plot, the love triangle, and how many classic crime novels balance the love triangle. Leonard is a simple man, and when he chats to Maigret, you see a man who has struggled and met a woman that has maybe been a wrong’em, and then Roger has made use of that space and Leonard. It also has Maigret Homelife, which I always love to see. This is something Simenon does is make Maigret’s wife a character in the books and give him a home life as well as his job. I’m annoyed I missed the club. I am sure when the next one in the 30s comes around, there will be a Simenon. There always seems to be any way or another from the penguin’s new translations of Maigret. I’m slowly working through them. Have you read this Mairgret? do you like how he plays with the form of the crime novel?

Winston’s score B solid Maigret can be read in an evening.

 

 

My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon

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My friend Maigret by Georges Simenon

Belgian crime fiction

Original title – Mon Ami Maigret

Translator – Shaun Whiteside

Source – Personal copy

It has been a while since I did a Maigret I may do one next week for 19562 if it gets to the library in time. But I read this a couple of weeks ago after buying it in my local Waterstones I had been eyeing the new small clothbound classics perfect for a coat pocket to have on hand any time. I’ve written about Simenon we all know how much he has written the exact number of books is quite sure as there is a feeling he may have used various other pseudonyms over his career and publishers. But penguin books are bring all the books out. They have done new translations of all the Maigrets this is the tenth book In the Maigret series I have reviewed.

Did the Englishman imagine that the French police had powerful cars to take them to crime scenes?

He must have thought, in any case, that the inspectors of the Police Judiciaire had unlimited travelling funds. Had Maigret been right? Alone, he would have settled for a couchette. At the Gare de Lyon, he hesitated. Then, at the last minute, he took two berths in a sleeping compartment.

It was magnificent. In the corridor, they met very wealthy travellers with impressive luggage. An elegant crowd, laden with flowers, was accompanying a film star to the train.

‘It’s the Blue Train, Maigret murmured, as if by way of apology.

Strange I mention Poirot and here is another link he has a novel set on The Blue train

This book focuses on someone who claims to have been a friend of Maigret  He was called Pacaud but was using the name Marcellin and had been living in the south of France. As Maigret is informed of this death in the south of France he may be connected to the victim. This event happens to coincide with the visit to Paris of an inspector from Scotland Yard who has come to observe and watch Maigret at work, I loved the way he is described you get that city gent image all that is missing is a black umbrella wrapped up. Mr Pyke makes Maigret feel uneasy. The pair head down to the south of France.  The fact Maigret hadn’t been working on anything much made Maigret wary of his English counterpart. But the trip and their case make the English man give his opinions and the two find out why this man died and how it is tied up with a young painter called De Greef and, a fake painting signed as a Van Gogh he had painted and sold. We follow the events as the two inspectors try to find the truth. It is strange to see Mairget with an equal in Pyke as they work to find who of the suspects was the killer?

‘I think, Mr Pyke, that in England investigations are carried out in a very orderly fashion, isn’t that right?

‘It depends. For example, after a crime that was committed two years ago near Brighton, one of my colleagues spent eleven weeks in an inn, spending his days angling and his evenings drinking ale with the locals.’ It was exactly what Maigret would have liked to be doing, and which he wasn’t doing because of that same Mr Pyke! By the time Lechat came in, he was in a bad mood.

The two have very different styles of  investigating

I am a fan of Maigret and this is another book that takes him out of Paris like some of the others have done. But it also has the curve ball of Inspector Pyke he is described as a stereotypical policeman from Scotland Yard at the time  (I was reminded of Gideon of the Yard, but this was before that book and film were written )  There is a sense early on in the book of the smartly dressed Pyke getting under the skin of Maigret when he goes home with him there is an atmosphere but as the book moves on and the Englishman starts to show he is Maigret equal the two grow closer as the crime shift Maigrets focus the similarity in the two men comes to light as they get closer to finding out who killed Marcellin and what did he know? I like the change of scene to Cote d Azur, he had used the old connection to Maigret before as a hook for the book but the introduction of an equal reminds me of Murder on the Links where Poirot goes head to head with a French policeman he has viewed as a  rival, but in this novel, it is more a working relationship than rivals   Have you read this?

Winstons score – B solid Maigret with the curve ball of Pyke to his usual team

The Widow Courdec By Georges Simenon

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The Widow Courdec by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title -La Veuve Couderc

Translator – Siãn Reynolds

Source – Review copy

I had planned to review this last month, but with reviewing strangers in the house for the Club year. So  I held this back. This was written in the mid-war years by Simenon, taken on an existentialist novel it happened to have come out the same year as Camus’s novel The Outsider, which has always overshadowed this work from Simenon. Something that annoyed Simenon as he felt his book was just as good. We have a new translation here as part of the Penguins project to bring everything they can by Simenon into English, a job they have been doing nearly as long as this blog has been going he wrote so much, over 400 books, some in his own name others with a varioety of pen names he used over his life. This is the 14th book I have reviewed in the blog from Simenon, and I will carry on as long as I keep getting either sent or see them around.

He was walking. For at least three kilometres, he was alone on the road across which tree trunks cast oblique shadows every ten metres, and he strode on, without hur-rying, from one dark strip of shade to the next. Since it was near midday and the sun was reaching its height, a grotesquely foreshortened shadow, his own, slipped along ahead of him.

The road led straight up to the summit of the hill, where it seemed to vanish from view. On the left, things rustled in the woods. On the right, in the gently rolling fields there was just one horse, far in the distance, a white horse, pulling a wine-vat mounted on wheels; in the same field stood a scarecrow, or it might have been a man.

The opening as we see Jean appear and what efrfect he will have on this whole story!

This starts with two souls that meet on a bust. They seem similar initially, but as the book goes on we see they are not. Jean is a middle-class man who has had a hard time, and he was just released from Prison when he meets Tati, the Widow Courdec of the book title. She is a woman that married the son of a rich family whilst she was a servant in that house and had been there since she was 14 and grown closer to the older brother. So you can get her place in this FGamily home with the sisters of her Husband when she has left the Estate as he was the only son in the Family. Tati loves the control this gives her, and she even uses it on Jean at times ! She sees Jean as perfect to be here, Valet. As the two grow closer. But as events change when Tati is attacked and bedridden by one of her husband’s sisters, Jean has to look after her in bed. As this is happening, it means there is a shift in the dynamics which means that Jean is spending a lot more time with the sister than he had before, so he is drawn to the youngster in the family, Felice, but does  Tati Know what knock-on effect will this have to them all?

First in the queue was the woman wearing mourning, dignified and disdainful, next the woman from the grocer’s shop, her neck swathed in a flannel bandage. That morning she had lost her voice.Then it was Felicie’s turn. There were other women as well, coming out of houses from every direction and approaching the butcher’s van. They took their time.Many of them had a gait like geese, swinging heavy stomachs ahead of them and eating as they walked.

The back of the van lifted up to reveal a kind of shop: whole quarter-carcasses were suspended inside; there was a set of scales with its copper weights, squares of brown paper hanging on a string.

Who’s next?

Felice is seen more by Jean later on but what effect will that have ?

This has themes of money and family power. People of the different class clash. Jean is a catalyst for these events. His introduction to the house is like The stranger appearing in Camus. The sheer fact he is there and the dynamics of the situation have changed will lead to an ending of some sort, but as the book unfolds, things seem to go one way and then another as other events happen. He wrote this a couple of years after strangers in the house, and you can see how he has grown as a writer. This has a complexity that some,e of his other books haven’t, but this is a dark book with a lousy relationship, a terrible family, and a man just out of prison. That is all you need for a book that is dark and uncomfortable at times. It questions who they are and what they desire as, over time, you see this change in all those within the house. This book is in a Different Translation from the US publisher NYRB Classics and is called The Widow by them. Have you read either translation ?

Winstons score -B solid piece of writing from Simenon lots of ideas here but maybe a little dark as well.

 

The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon

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The Strangers in the House by Goerges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – Les inconnus dans la maison

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – Personal copy

I am late again for my last book for the 1940 club. I’d love a fortnight for it myself. I am like a kid in a sweet shop when I read the list of books for every year when it comes out I have reviewed 3 books, but I had actually brought six for this week ready. But I think the others are books I will get to at some point. There is a given for most years we get to read from for the club and that there is more than likely a book from Georges Simenon as he was such a prolific writer in his lifetime and that was the case for this year it was one of his roman Durs books his darker stand-alone works he wrote and this had a new translation from the ever-growing Penguin series that aims to put all his books out in English. Here we have a book that uses a classic bit of crime novel writing, and that is the found body no one knows at the start.

He could have sworn that the sound didn’t come from the bed, which must be to the left – at least it had been there the last time Loursat had gone into his daughter’s room by chance, perhaps two years earlier.

“Open up!’ he said simply.

Just a minute..

The minute was a very long one. Behind the door, someone moved, trying hard to make his or her movements as silent as possible.

When he hears the shot sand wonders what it was only to fiund out the truth!!

The book finds a reclusive drinker, a man who, after his wife who left him nearly twenty years earlier. He has withdrawn from the world. This all changes when his daughter and her friends living on the edge bring a man they had hit with a car home, and it is that man who is shot dead by the shot that wakes the reclusive Hector Loursat. He used to have a law practice before the divorce and his decline into the bottle, so when he reappears to all those in the small town, many of which he knew before those years away. After many years it is with a sense of strangeness from those in the village, and when Hector wants to find out what really happened on that night with his daughter and her friends, did his daughter’s boyfriend kill this man in cold blood? Who is the man? A father shares a house with his daughter but they are two bodies swimming in different worlds in the same space but in separate worlds. Only after the events does Hector tries to find out about the gang she runs with and her life and save her man! Will he find out who fired the shot that morning that brought him?

Poor Chief Inspector Binet! He hadn’t expected such a greeting. He stood up, then sat down again, apologizing.

It was Josephine who had admitted him to the study while it was still light. She had left him to his fate, and he had stayed seated with his hat on his knees, first in the half-light, then in complete darkness.

I thought I ought perhaps to bring you up to date on . . . I mean, it did happen in your house, didn’t it?

The police are a bit hopeless in the book and jump to a conclusion about the events of that night

This has two classic crime novels things the first is the body appearing in a room dead from Body in the Library by Christie to Silver Blaze by Conan Doyle. The found body and the events thereafter have started a great crime novel. Then we have a group of suspects in His daughter Nicoles, her boyfriend, the chief suspect in the law’s eyes and the gang they run with. This book has a plot but is more driven by the characters in the book and their stories as much as what is happening in the book. It sees a man coming back into the world after so many years. It sees a father uncover his daughter’s actual life. It sees them both facing ghosts from their past and the events many years ago that lead Hector to become a recluse. I had probably read this at some point. My aim is to read as many of his books as I can over the next few years, and the Roman Durs these are the books I have not read as many of, but in this one, he has managed to mix a few classic crime novel traits alongside a  character study. Have you read this book or have you a favourite from his Roman Durs ?

Winstons score – B A solid Simenon not my favourite by him but not the worst I have read.

 

The people Opposite by Georges Simenon

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The People opposite by Georges simenon

Belgian  fiction

original title – Les Gens d’en face 

Translator  – Sian Reynolds

Source – review copy

I am as you may know a huge fan of simenon both his crimes and no crime works which over the last decade or so Penguin has been bring out in new translations. I have reviewed 11 from the books that have. come out so far and my intention is to try over time read all the books Penguin has brought out from him a long term project for me not a race as I find myself reviewing two or three a year from him and I do have a couple on my shelves. But was happy when I was asked if I was interested in reviewing this which is an early book in his writing life being written in 1933 and is also for Simenon a political book it came after he had a trip to Stalins Russia in 1933 and came back and wrote this book.It was originally published in seven parts so there is that pacing of a serial work.

The only newcomer present was Adil Bey, and he was so recent that he had arrived in Batumi that very morning. At the Turkish consulate, he had found a single official from Tbilisi holding the fort.

The official, who would be leaving again that night, had brought Adil new along to the Italian consulate, to introduce him to his two colleagues.

Adil is the new boy in the town.

The book was written on his return and what we get is the Stalinist Russia caught in a small Black Sea port and we are introduced to the New Turkish consul AdilBey who has been sent to the port town which is a multi cultural place. But he feels out of place  and why did his previous consul turn up dead and why did thethe other Turkish staff disappear back to his base as soon as he appears. there is a sense of poverty the town, even thou it is near the oil rich fields of Russia. Adil is alone in this town and so when his Russian secretary appears Sonia she has been sent to help him and this sparks Aldi how falls for `Sonia and gets obsessive around her as he watches her in the room opposite his office.But is she trying to tempt him ? we see the two grow close but there is always a sense of more to this relationship she lives with her brother a member of the GPU( the state police). The action slowly unwinds you cans see where this relationship is going and it isn’t going end in wedding bells and roses !!!

This girl, Sonia, could hardly be more than eighteen years old. She was a slip of a thing, with a pale face, fair hair and light blue eyes, yet she had a calm and self assured strength that panicked the consul. The door had remained open and he walked over to watch, as she told the crowd to leave.

She was standing very upright in. the middle of the office, pen in hand, and speaking Russian, without raising her voice but gesturing to stress what she wanted. Since the woman nursing the the baby had remained sitting in her corne, she walked straight up to her, removed the child from the breast, and buttoned up the woman’s blue herself

His initial meeting with Sonia his secretary when she arrives you sense his wonder at this young woman.

For me has caught what must have been the soviet world at times where everyone at some point seems to be spying on one another. It has a slow burning as we see the two grow closer I was remind of the relationship in tinker tailor soldier spy with Ricky and the Russian wife there is always a sense that this isn’t going be a good outcome. He slowly unfurls their relationship but then you figure there may be more to it than first meets the eye this is of course Stalin’s Russia and there is the under running current of fear and worry in the book and the way people act at times.It also capture a lonely man a women in a situation that is caught between love and duty. I liked this book it is different to his other books but he is very good at what makes people tick at times and he has caught that here the way the characters although obvious show how the system was and also the effect of a system like stalinism on those inside it and also coming into it from the outside was there a similar Sonia figure that maybe caught Simenon eyes when he was on his trip too Russia. There is an intro where he does say a bout his time in Russia. I do wonder  how ,such pop Adil is him in disguise as he wrote this straight after his return. Have you a favourite Simeon or book in Soviet Russia written from someone that visited Russia at the time ?

Winstons score – A a solid afternoon read that deals with Stalinism through the prism of two characters one inside and one outside the regime.

 

Three Bedrooms in Manhatten

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Three Bedrooms in Manhatten

Belgian fiction

Original title – Trois Chambres à Manhattan

Translators – Marc Romano and Lawrence G Blochman

Source – Review copy

I’m late to my review of this I initially picked it up in the summer and just wasn’t connecting to the book then I often find if I try a book at another time like I did with this one I get into it. When I have more time on my side and as I had a morning and I have always found Simenon writes books that on the whole are under two hundred pages long and can be read in a single sitting like this one. As this book now makes a Dozen book I have reviewed by him this is one of his standalone books. This book stems from the post-war years that Simenon himself had lived in New york. It follows a couple of European like himself who have been transplanted and are wandering around the big city like lost souls into they meet in this book.

He was surorised to find himself eyeing the boy who had took their order to make sure he didn’t know her, thart she hadn’t come here a hundred times with other men. Would he make some sign of recongnition to her ?

Yet he wasn’t in love with her. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t already he felt irritaion watching her fumble in  her purse for a cigarette, woth her commonplace gestures, the way she brought the cigarette up to her  lips, smudging it with her lipstick as she fished around for her lighter

Even at the start it is on rocky ground as he isn’t sure of Kay.

The two lost souls at the heart of this book are Frank and Kay. Frank is a middle-aged Actor divorced and struggling after a scandal that saw his wife leave him for a younger actor and he is now been in America for six months (this was about the same time Simenon himself had been in the US when he wrote this book). Then we have  Kay a socialite who has fallen on hard times as they meet in the night after drinking in one of the all-night dinners that are about in Postwar New York. These lost souls connect and end up sleeping together and as they connect and meet on a couple more occasions what happens is a relationship between two souls that are at the lowest ebb and clinging to each other and this brief interlude of sex in sordid hotels, I was struck at his description of a run in Kay’s stocking that she had just to live with a harrowing place to be in. Frank and Kay are damaged but in the end, it is a relationship doomed to the three bedrooms they end up in as we see this brief relationship.

She took his head in her hands. She pushed it against her shoulder, pressing his cheek to hers. She held it therm almost by force, as if to fill him, bit by bit, with her heat and  her presence.

He kept one eye open. Inside was a block of anger he meant to keep intact.

“You weren’t as alone as I was , ” she said. She said it softly.He wouldn’t have heard the words if herlips hadn’t neem by his ears.

It means more to her it seems at times that it does to Frank

This is different from the other books that I have read by him. There is a feeling it must have some of his own experiences spent in New York, just after world war two whereas seen in the book there is a lot of ex-pats wandering around after dark in this city it is like the cover picture which is Edward Hoppers Nighthawks painting apt as these two could have a jump of the picture. They also are like characters from a Tom Waits song or a Raymond Carver short stories this has a large chunk of Dirty realism at its heart this is the dark side of those early post-war years before the gleam and shine of the 50s the tough times had by those that had escaped the horrors of the war years as they are clinging to life through drink and getting by adding to that they both have other problems a wife leaving and losing ones home to also compete with this is a glimpse at people at there lowest point. The relationship reminds me of the one John Cusack described in the Film version of High fidelity (I hate the fact it was moved to the US ) but his relationship with Sarah is very like this relationship two souls clinging to each other when at their lowest ebbs. An interesting book it was made into a film in the early 60 and would still make a good film as the characters are universal in a way the way it deals with casual sex and people on the edge of life drifting through their nights out.

Winstons score – B+ a tale of two lost souls and a couple of brief erotic encounters.

The Melting by Lize Spit

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The Melting by Lize Spit

Belgium fiction

Original title – Het Smelt

Translator Kristen Gehrman

Source – review copy

This book was a big hit around Europe when it came out Lize spit debut novel won Hebban debut fiction prize and was snapped up for a film within days of it coming out which isn’t surprising at the Brussels film school she studied screenwriting there is a strong cinematic feel to the book. She said in an interview on the flemish literature site that she grew up in a house where there was no Tv till she was eleven and she grew up reading books after school and would run home every day to find out what was going in the books she was reading. What she has done here is taken to classic genres The coming of age novel and a thriller as we meet Eva a woman with a secret in her past.

In the summer of 1993, right before Laurens, pim and I finished preschool and started kindergarten,a letter was sent around to all of the teachers at the primary school and our six parents: a meeting had been planned , and the presence was required.

In the meeting, Beatrice the school principal, got right to the point. How it was possible that only three babes were borning 1988? Was it the cold winter, the hot summer, the black monday tyhe previous October that made couple take it easy in the bedroom for a while? Why were so few children born that year? Her school was the smallest in the region, with an average class size of ten(One of its greatest assests in her oponion)

So from an early age the the three Musketeers were together since a very young age !

There is a huge block of ice in the back of Eva’s car as she is heading back to the small town she grown up in she had an invite to a new milking parlor opening which has become a large event in the small town. The invite is from Pim one of her two best friends growing up. Pim lost his older brother as they were growing up something that Eva in the present keeps thinking about as she heads home for the first time in a long time. Laurens her other friend the three of them called themselves the three musketeers as they started growing into men and women one summer they started to ask each girl in the village a question about the sort of things kids do as they are discovering themselves and entering puberty. The story unfolds in the past that summer that it all changed for the three main characters the reason Eva has the ice in her car and her wanting revenge for the day her world changed. Then we see the present as Eva heads back to her family which is a mother that never stood up to her father a dominant man and thus this made her older sister a neurotic. As the ice slowly melts what happened is told and what will happen is told side by side.

Pim’s parents always let us play anywhere we wanted on the farm, but there were four places that were off-limits: the left side of the hayloft (The hay was too thin there, and we might fall through), the garage with the floor pit(the wood cover was rotten and dangerous). The septic tank grates in the old cowshed(no longer reliable), and the white mounds, That they were never given a reason for the last one, We were simply told that they were forbidden territory, even though they looked so innocent and inviting.

Once at a birthday party, Laurens rested his foto on the white plastic. Pim yanked him to the ground by the hood of his jacketso hard that it ripped off the snaps.

What are the white Mounds in the famers fileld that is now Pims field

The use of the two timelines is so well-paced the past unfolds as we see Eva heading in the present back into her past as she heads home for the first time the past is a tale of growing up but like over tales from Lord of the Flies to something like the dinner what happens when those events when young men and women are at that turning point in their puberty where a single moment can change the course of a number of lives this is what happened here the second timeline is a wonderful slow-burning thriller storyline of revenge viewed through Eva’s eyes as she heads home after 13 years. I said in the first part that she had studied screenwriting you can see and also her love of reading books that left her wanting more there is a lot of chapters ends here that make you want to read on. She has also used that twist that has been in a number of thrillers that have been made into films in recent years In particular two I’m thinking of are gone girl and the girl on the train which also in films at least had various strands to the storyline. but also had similar pacing to this book I can see why the film rights sold straight away the characters are painted well enough but it is the action and eye for detail she has that make it flows off the page so if you’d like a cocktail of gone girl, lord of the flies with a dab of Dumas thrown in this is the book for you.

Winstons Score – B a solid thriller with a great coming of age tale in a small farming village.

 

 

The little man from Archangel by Georges Simenon

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The little man from Archangel by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – Le Petit Homme d’Arkhangelsk

Translator Sian Reynolds

Source – review copy

A quick break from all the booker longlist books and another of the series of books that Penguin over the last few years have been retranslating from the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon. This is the 11th book from these books I have reviewed.  Here is a novel that shows how diverse his style was a crime novel but more a commentary on those values that simmer under the surface in small french towns and how when a meek mild-mannered man can get s=caught up through one simple lie. This book has been a radio drama on radio four and with a change in the origins of the main character, it was made into a film in 2007. This among critics it is considered to be one of his best books!

He makes the mistake of telling a lie. He sensed this is the moment he opened his mouth to answer fernand Le Bouc, and it was really inly from timidity and lack of self confidence that he hailed to change the words that rose to his lips.

So he said

“She’s gone to Bourges.”

Le boue,as he rinsed a glass behind the counter, asked,”La Loute still there, is she?”

He replied without looking up

“I suppose so”

It wasten in the morning and a thursdad, so the markjet was in full swing. In Fernand’s narrow, glass-frontedcafe on the corner of Impasse des tois-Rois, five or six men were standing at the counter. At the precise moment, it was not important who was present, but it would became so, and Jonas Milk would try to indentiry every face

The book opens with a little white lie that will snowball out of control for the meek Jonas.

The book follows a couple Jonas Milk and his gina a good wife she keeps their flat above their bookshop clean the marriage was sorted from her family to give her a settled base but there is little love companionship and a 16 year age difference. but she has one small problem her mild-mannered meek husband of Russian descent. This meek man isn’t enough so she spends the night with other men but she always returns. So when one morning when she hadn’t returned to her home when asked by a neighbor where his wife was that day she disappeared he says she had visited the local town as the days turn voices start turning toward Jonas the Russian who came to the town with his parents he went to Paris but returned to this village settled down. A man that is simple with plain tastes soon finds him at the heart of gossip and also a changing feeling as the longer Gina is away the more the eyes turn to the husband about what has happened to her. Jonas starts to feel the pressure build around him as he is trapped by what he had said as people cut him off and rumors start around him!

The left him in peace until monday, too much in peace perhaps, since it made him think they were distrancing themselves from him. Perhaps he was becoming too sensitive and ascribing to people non-existent intentions?

Having asked for news of Gina over the last two days, as insistently as if they were calling him to account, they no longer mentioned her in his presence now, and he suspected Le Bouc, ancel and the others were deliberately avoiding reffering to his wife.

Why had they suddenly lost interest in her? And if they knew where she was, what reason did they have not to tell him ?

The suspicions of Jonas grows and he starts to see the signs of the Anti semitisim and the suspicions around him?

This is different from the other books I have read by Simenon as they are mainly from the Maigret series of books here we have him looking at the way a small town can turn itself also an underlying feeling of anti Semitism that follows under the town when it turns out Gina may have not gone to the next town and all eyes turn on Jonas the Russian although he has lived in France most of his life and is French. It is a story of the undercurrents that flow in small towns like this in the post-war years where the mistrust is never far away. What happened to Gina, what will happen to Jonas. It is a perfect evening to read a glimpse into a small french town that becomes fevered rather like in Agartha christie towns there is an undercurrent against the immigrant. There are two more coming in the series of non-Maigret books coming this year. Have you read this or any of the other non-Maigret Simenon books.

Winstons score  -A  This is a perfect book for an early summer evening.

 

Maigret and Monsieur Charles by Georges Simenon

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Maigret and Monsieur Charles by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title –  Maigret et Monsieur Charles

Translator – Ros Schwartz

Source – review copy

I was pleased I was sent this title which is the last of the novels of the Maigret series that Penguin has been putting out in new translations. I was in at the start and have reviewed nine of the new title including this one. In fact, it was six years ago yesterday I posted my review of Pietr the Latvian which came out in 1931 this his last novel featuring Maigret was written in 1972 with many years Simenon publishing two Maigret books I still have  66 of the new series to read. But it has been a great achievement from Penguin to bring this and many of his novels out in new translations. I do hope we see more of these in the Rowan Atkinson series that has done bur it seems to have been cancelled which is a shame.

“You are Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, are you not?”

“Yes”

“I Imagined you fatter”

She was wearing a fur coat and matching hat,was it mink? Maigret had no idea, because the wife of a divisionary chief inspector genrally had to be content with rabbit or, at best , muskrat or nutria

Madame Sabin-Levesque’s eyes roved slowly around the office as if making an inventory. When Lapointe sat down at the desk, with his notebook and pencil,she asked

“Is this youngmany going to stay in the room?”

“Of course”

“Is he going make a not of our conversation?”

“It’s the rule”

Her brow furrowed and she gripped her crocodile sjin hand bag tighter

She reports Gerard disappearance and seems to be a lady by the description but there is more than fur and crocodile skin.

Maigret is nearing his retirement and is on the verge of an office job when this case comes across his desk. When Nathalie Sabin- Levesque whose husband Gerard but then Maigret and Lapointe discover that he is well known around the town and often leaves his wife for days drinking and is known to the girls of the night he meets as  Monsieur Charles. So he had disappeared a month earlier than they expected when Nathalie first came to them due to his habit of disappearing for days. Charles /Gerrard works for successful lawyers this shows the other side of his life the people he works with aren’t fans of his wife. WHo had said she was a legal secretary when she met Gerrard but who it turns out was a call girl that he married and she has tried to take up the mantle of a rich wife. But she has her ghost from her past trying to threaten her. In turn, has this effect her husband when he turns up dead Maigret is faced with a choice in what is maybe the last time he can tread those dark alleys, bars, cafes of Paris.

“Do you haveany news?” He asked

“Not news, exactly. As far as I know, the last person who saw your boss was hostedd at the cric-Crac in Rue Clement- Marot, And when he left her he was supposed to go to Avenue des Ternes, where a young woman was expecting him… That was in the middle of the night of the 18th of feburary… He never turned up at the Avenue des Termes … Perhaps he changed his mind on the way?

Charles had a habit of disappearing for days.

The feeling is the later Maigrets are weaker than the earlier ones but like Doyle when he wrote the Holmes stories they just run out of material for their character to do. So there is common threads in the books to earlier works fallen woman ladies of the night is a recurring character in Maigret. The rich doing wrong is another recurring theme in Maigret. When Maigret and Lapointe head out to find Monsieur Charles and what he is like it seems old times as they hunt the dark underbelly of Paris. It has a poor marriage at its heart a husband that married a call girl and carried on as he always did a wife that wants the world he lived in but instead is caught in a limbo. It is a story that has many twists and turns in it but maybe isn’t as original as the earlier books seemed.

A nail, A rose by Madeleine Bourdouxhe

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A nail, A rose by Madeleine Bourdouxhe

Belgian fiction

Original title – Sept Nouvelles

Translator – Faith Evans

Source – review copy

I featured a picture of this for my women in translation covers piece earlier in the week. I had read this a while ago as it came out in May but felt it was a great choice for women in translation month as it shows what Pushkin do so well and that is rediscovered writers that have disappeared here we have the Belgian writer Madeliene Bourdouxhe although she moved with her family at a young age to Paris  during world war one returning to Brussels to attend university, She married a maths teacher  and began writing during the war she was in the resistance . After the war, she frequently went to Paris meeting writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Queneau. This collection was published firstly in the late eighties and it great it is back in print in a Pushkin edition.

Come on, “he said, “get some change..”

She went in and returned with the notes. She watched Nicholas as he hung the hose back on the petrol pump and handed over the change; she watched the cas as it pulled out , re-entered the right lane, and disappeared in the direction of Masions-Alfort. At the garage over the way anpther car pulled in. The women who worked there was tall, gaunt and older that Anna, and she wore an old fashion chignon on the crown of her head , fastened not with hairpin but with four or five criss-crossing nails, which formed a rosette around the chignon, a real curiosity

I loved anna description of the woman over the road her hair sounds so unusual and destinctive with its nails holding it in place!!

This is a collection of stories all but one is told from a female point of view. The woman, on the whole, seem to maybe be a general vision of women in the pre and war years this book came out in 1944 the last story touches on this story Sous le point Mirabeau follows a Belgian woman, just become a mother and with many others trying to get into France. I liked another story Blanche it starts with a husband asking if his shirt is ironed but his wife is wistful dreamy Blanche doesn’t see her life as a housewife so doesn’t iron her short this is a woman that maybe is one the edge at one point when she heads into the woods with her son its dark he says but we are looking for squirrels to reassure him this scene makes you wonder what was going to happen . In other stories, we have one  Rene is the flip of the other stories a man looking at ordinary women lives this is a subtle collection of ordinary lives brought to life from Heartbreak to Trauma.

Blanche hurried along the path, holding her hand. Some drops of rain were still falling but the heat of the day lingering and the air was warm.

“Shall we walk through the wooods? Blanche said.

“Its all black in therem I’de be frightened” said Jean-Louis

“You mustn’t be afraid of the wood. We might see some squirrels in there …”

“Squirrels? All right then,” Said Jean-Louis

Blanche takes her son into the dark woods one night …

I held this back as it was so perfect for this month from the great cover art of a factory girl of the time a strong woman, an ordinary woman which is what Bourdouxhe captures so well in this book. she captures the voice and internal feeling of the women she writes about okay they are all very similar in character but they also show maybe the changing thoughts of the writer at the time this collection came out in 1944 a time when the writer her self had seen action in the resistance but women’s roles  in the home and workplace had changed during those war years. I feel this is an undercurrent in these characters from Blanche feeling unlike a housewife to trying to get to France in a crowd. There is a number of other books that the translator had translated inn the eighties lets hope they also get reissued. Have you read her books?

 

Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon

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Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon

Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title – L’Inspecteur Cadavre

Translator William Hobson

Source – library book

I had another couple of books set aside for 1944 club but started one and didn’t get into it and the other was rather long so I had picked this up in the library last week after thinking Had Simenon wrote any books in 1944. Not that hard to imagine he hadn’t as he wrote 700 novels in his life and there is a good chance he had written some books in 1944. He turned out to have written three Maigret books that year This and as the earlier title was Maigret and the fortuneteller and Maigret and the toy village the later I knew as it was used as one of the earlier ITV Maigret series with Micheal Gambon called Felice. Now it has a common theme with this book as well.

“You don’t need anything ? I was forgetting … let me show you the w.c..”

The Men shake hands, and then Maigret undresses and gets in bed. He hears noises in the house. from very far off in his half sleep his ears cathc what sounds like the murmuring of voices , but it sonns fades awaym and the house becomes quiet as it is dark.

He falls asleep, of thinks he does. He keeps seeing the dismal face of Carve, who had to be the most miserable man on this earht, and then he dreams that the apple-cheeked maid who waited on them at dinner is bringing him his breakfast.

Magiret arrives and meets carve and dreams of him and the local maid that first nifght in the village.

Felice like Inspector Cadaver sees Maigret outside his home turf of Paris. He heads to a small village like in Felice. This time he is doing a favor for a Judge friend. The brother in law of the Judge Etienne Naud a landowner in the village of Saint Aubin Les Marias. On January 7 a man was killed by the train the Albert was crushed by a train.The young man had a connection to the Naud family.  Now the Judge is worried as he brother in law has said the rumor going around is that he has done it and Maigret is asked to go and try and find out what happened. When he arrives he sees another man that he has known in the past a former Policeman that Maigret had a run in whilst they were both still policeman the man Carve was called Inspector cadaver by his fellow officers. He wasn’t the best policeman what is he doing in the village. As Maigret starts to ask questions around the village everyone is silent. But as it becomes clear what sort of man Maigret is and that is a man of truth and justice the locals start to open up about the event before and during that fateful night.

The question Maigret had been turning over in his mind since the previous evening was this;  was he staying with decent sorts who had nothing to hide and were extending their warmest welcome to a guest from Paris, or was he an undesirable outsider whom examining Magistrate Brejon had thoughtlessly imposed on a non plussed household who would gladly have dispensed with his services.

Maigret gets there and feelslike the Nauds doin’t really want him there.

I was reading this earlier in the week and Kaggyy put up her review of this book as well. I left reading it so I had read the book and thought what I thought of the book. This has part of what we haven’t seen yet in the recent Maigret tv series and that is him outside Paris he was in one of the new books but it did link back to Paris this is a story set in the Village. I had the Gambon Maigret in mind for this story as he seems o more suited in my mind to the ones outside Paris he actually did what Simenon did there and Kaggy point out and that he tended to side with the common folk in the story this especially in Felice where he sided with the young woman in the village  that everyone else had problems with he was a man of the poor and the underdog . he is also like a terrier dog as a detective not graceful more get stuck in and the clues are there and he goes around at times he is quite blunt in this book. Then there is also the story of his old rival as a second storyline the story of how Carve was made to leave the police. Another enjoyable book in this series and it brings to eight of the Maigrets I have reviewed there is still a lot to go in the series hopefully next club will also have one to review !!

Maigret’s Secret by Georges Simenon

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Maigret’s secret by Georges Simenon

Belgian fiction

Original title –  Une confidence de Maigret

Translator – David watson

Source – personal copy

It has been ten months since I reviewed a Maigret on the blog so when a search for a holiday read, I choose the latest of the series of books that Penguin has been bringing out over the last few years. This is one of the later books. This is slightly different to the other books I have read as Maigret himself is retelling the events of the case many years after the event. There is still a number of Maigret books to come I will be dipping in over the years to come I am sure not in order unfortunately but as they appeal to me.

A longer silence. He emptied his pipe and took another one from his pocket, which he slowly filled, seeming to caress the briar.

I remember one case, not so long ago .. Did you follow the josset affair ?

“The name rings a bell”

“There was a lot in the papers about it, but the true story insofar as there is a true story was never told”

It was very unnusual for him to talk about a case he had been involved in. Occasionally, at Quai des Orfevres, among colleagues, some famous case or some difficult investigation might be mentioned, but it was always a passing allusion.

Magriet starts talking about Josset and his case with him a rare event.

Maigret is at a dinner party one evening when he starts telling his fellow guests a story of an old case that since it happened had troubled him.The case is that of one Adrien Josset. He is a man that came from a modest background. But thanks to his wives wealth gets a position which gives him a good standard of living. He is also having an affair with his secretary Annette a much younger woman than his wife. So when after a night out with his mistress where he bumps into Annette’s father and somehow says he will marry her. So when he returns and later his wife turns up dead he is, of course, the number one suspect. But over the interviews with Josset  Maigret feels this man is innocent and believes his story. But the problem is the case is quickly seized upon by the press and when events outside the case lead to a backlash against Josset and puts him in the frame in the publics Eye what is Maigret to do, this is what he expains over the course of two evening to his friends at a dinner party.

Certain details of the case were etched more sharply than others in Maigret’s memory. Even years later he could recall the particular taste and smell of the rain shower in the Rue Caulaincourt as keenly as a childhood memory.

It was six thirty in the evening, and when the rain started it did not obscure the sun, already red above the rooftops. The sky remained ablaze, the window shimmering with the reflected light, and only a siingle pearl grey clud, slightly darker at the centre and glowing at its edges, floated over the streets, as light as a ballon.

Maigret recalls visitng a scene involved in the crime and remembers it years later.

This is different to the over  Maigret as it shows the foibles of the man. But it maybe is quite a modern story as it shows the power of the press in forming public opinion. This happens more so now than it used to I can think of a number of cases over the last few years where the press has driven public opinon in the case. This is shown to great effect in the book. Maigret is shown as a fair man like he is in the other books but one that can also dwell on events that have happened. This is also a classic what might have ben in a way one of those case that seems open and shut when it starts.

Maigret and the man on the bench by Georges Simenon

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Maigret and the man on the beach

Belgian fiction

Original title – Maigret et l’homme du banc

Translator – David Watson

Source – Library copy

At the start of the year I reviewed the last Maigret book to be made into one of the new series of tv dramas starring Rowan Atkinson Maigret and the dead man, I was in the library the other day and this cover of one of the most recent editions opf the penguin series to reissue new translations of all the Maigret books caught my eye .

His clothes were clean , respectable . He was wearing a dark suit, a biege raincoat and on his feet which were twisted at an odd angle , he wore greenish-yellow shoes, which seemed out of keeping with a day as colourless at this

Apart from his shoes, he appeared so ordinary that he would have passed completely unnoticed onn the street or on one of the numerous cafe terraces on the boulevard. Neverless, the policeman who discovered him said :

“I get the feeling , I’ve seen him before.”

The body would be anypone apart from those shoes of his !!

So this is like the other novels and all starts with a murder . Louis Thouret is found dead on a bench at a dead-end road. He seems normal enough barring a rather bright pair of yellow shoes. As Maigret takes his wife to see him she says his shoes weren’t his own and at the time he died he should have been work . The usual team around Maigret swing into action , the place he worked isn’t there in fact Louis had worked for a long while getting by on loans and then taking a turn into the world of crime but his family seemed to have known nothing about the double life he was living which meant another flat and life away . But as they ask the family maybe his daughter had more to say than she did. Maigret grows to like Louis and he efforts to keep his family unaware of the loss his job.

“Kaplan and Zanin’s ?” he asked her

“the company closed down three years ago next month my good man ”

“wer you already working here ?”

“I’ll have been here twenty-six years this December.”

“Did you know Louis Thouret?”

“Why of course I knew Monsieur Louis! What has become of him? It must be four of five months since he last dropped by to say hello”

“He’s dead” she immediately stopped sorting the letter.

“He always enjoyed such good health ! What was it ? Heart,I’ll bet just like my husband…”

“He was stabbed to death , yesterday afternoon , not far from here .”

They discover his old workplace has long since ceased trading !

This is a classic story line from crime fiction .I know of a couple of similar classic tales from couple of other classic Crime writers. Connan Doyles Holmes investigated the case of the man with the twisted lip where a respected man thought to have died in an opium den and there is a beggar that is well-known for his ability to quote poetry is he the missing man ? . This is also a similar plot themes  to the Poirot the disappearance of mr Davenheim where the main character disappears but had made a sideline as a  criminal and had spent time in prison not south africa as he said , as part of a plan to frame someone. These both involved the male head of a family that has lost position , money or a job , but was too proud to admit it thus leading them to a life on the other side of the fence of the law.The book was originally released as a part work in the french paper Le figaro in the fifties. I wonder if this will get the Atkinson treatment who since he became Maigret is now whom I picture when reading these books.