A biography of the author of the Maigret stories discusses his sexual jealousy, his youthful life of crime, and his dark, probing novels, drawing connections between his childhood and his tormented fiction.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
When the prolific Georges Simenon died at age 86 in 1989, he had written hundreds of novels and several memoirs. Among the author's favorites were his books about shrewd and compassionate Inspector Maigret, conceived by Simenon in 1931 after he left Belgium to live in Paris. As Marnham ( Trail of Havoc: In the Steps of Lord Lucan ) shows, the hero of Simenon's superb French policiers is quite different from his creator. The author's life was turbulent: he was sexually obsessed; he abandoned his wife and son to marry a woman who was as promiscuous as he was; he coupled with his maids. Simenon himself revealed much of this in his last book, Intimate Memoirs, addressed to his only daughter, Marie-Jo, after she committed suicide at age 23 in 1978. Marnham's scrupulous study of this memoir and of Simenon's Belgian family background lay bare Simenon's fantomes. This is a story of an enigma, a man more extraordinary than any character in his perennial bestsellers, and certainly nothing like the admirable Maigret. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The Belgian Simenon (1903-89) was a prolific writer, having completed 193 novels under his own name (the most famous being those of the detective Maigret series), over 200 under 18 pseudonyms; two autobiographical novels and four autobiographies. After his retirement, he dictated 21 volumes of memoirs. Internationally known because of translations and film adaptations of his work, Simenon was quite an eccentric. As Marnham notes, Simenon's autobiographical writings were "a complex web of fact and fantasy which he ended by partly believing himself." Marnham's patient unraveling of the facts behind Simenon's unusual and incredibly busy life is a pleasure to read. Additional, helpful features of the book are its bibliography and index. Recommended for general readers and specialists in the field.
- Danielle Mihram, Univ. of Southern Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Danielle Mihram, Univ. of Southern Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You must read it to believe it!,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon (Harvest Book) (Paperback)
What can be said of a man who claimed to have slept with 10,000 women? who kept his wife, son and two mistresses under one roof? who hated his mother and slapped around his second wife?
Simenon lived and breathed to write, and he wrote with astonishing rapidity, producing 76 Maigret titles, 117 novels and many volumes of memoirs. Where were all the plots, characters, locales and insights to come from, if not from his life? Patrick Marnham's biography is a fascinating read, and makes us feel that perhaps Simenon had to be as wicked as he was to be the tremendous writer that he was. Marnham does a sensitive job of tracing the influences of two world wars, two occupations and two post-war purges on Simenon, the man and the writer. I especially enjoyed reading about Simenon's work methods - how, for example, he'd write his psychological novels in a kind of trance. How Maigret was born in a fog of schnapps. And how Simenon limited his literary vocabulary to 2,000 words, so as not to break his concentration by consulting the dictionary.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very good, very annoying,
By Traven (New York, NY, United States) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon (Harvest Book) (Paperback)
This is a well-researched, well-thought-out biography, with only a handful of missing pieces. (Would have been nice to have more fly-on-the-wall detail about Simenon's sexual encounters, which were at the center of his life, about whether he ever had STDs, whether he used drugs during his writing marathons, etc.) However, by the end, Marnham's pretentious insistence on using untranslated French -- particularly when he wants to make an important or subtle point -- is likely to irritate and exhaust readers who don't read French.
What did Simenon's mother think of him at the end of her life? Apparently "that 'Georges aimait toujours les petites gens' and that he was 'tres fier ... mais, voyez-vous, monsieur, c'etait une fierte tres mal placee.'" Clears that right up. What did Simenon think of de Gaulle? That he was a "cocorico." What did the only living witness to Simenon fleeing the French freedom fighters at the end of WW2 have to say? When "asked if the FFI were 'mauvais garcons,' she replied 'Ils n'etaient pas toujours tre intelligents.'" Why does Marnham refer to three different people as "clochards"? There's not a word for that in English? And so on. Marnham seems quite proud to have written the first major biography of Simenon in English. Simenon, who prized clarity and simplicity in his writing, and was read by more people in other languages than in French, would have punched him in the nose. Which is too bad. Aside from parts that will make literally no sense to the many fans of Simenon who don't read French, this is a great book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ManWho Wasn't Miagret A Portrait of Goerges Simenon,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon (Harvest Book) (Paperback)
Great Book Have Read most Of Georges Simenon's Books Wanted To Read about The Author Very Pleased With Book & Seller
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