The Saint-Fiacre Affair by Georges Simenon

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The Saint-Fiacre Affair

Penguin Classics|6 November 2014|160 pages|Paperback|3*

The Saint-Fiacre Affair by Georges Simenon was first published in January 1932, under the title Maigret Goes Home. My copy is one of the Penguin Classics publications in new translations.

Saint-Fiacre is where Maigret was born and grew up. His father had been the steward of the château there for thirty years. So when an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls’ Day mass at the church is handed in to the Moulins police office, Maigret went back there for the first time since his father had died. It is a melancholy visit for as well as a death to investigate, Maigret finds so much had changed and the atmosphere was oppressing him – he had never imagined that he would find the village in such a sorry state.

The predicted death took place in the church whilst Maigret was attending the the first Mass on All Soul’s Day – the old Countess of Saint-Fiacre died during the mass, of heart failure.  But Maigret soon discovers that the heart attack had been brought on when the Countess read a fake newspaper story of her son’s suicide that had been planted in her missal. Maigret suspects a number of people could have been responsible – her son, Maurice, her secretary/lover, Jean, the steward, Ernest and his son, Emile.

I enjoyed this book, although I found it rather disjointed and at times couldn’t follow very easily who was speaking, so it was a bit difficult keeping track of what was going on – maybe that was my problem, I’m not sure. But I thought the melancholy atmosphere and the descriptions of the chateau and Maigret himself were well done and it is packed with drama and tension. The denouement in which Maigret reveals the truth reminded me of the way Poirot rounds up all the people involved and explains who had done the deed and why, and why it was a crime that was not punishable by the law. 

 Reading Challenges – Calendar of Crime (winter scene on the cover), and Mount TBR 2019(a book I’ve owned for 2 years)

Virtual Mount TBR Final Checkpoint

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The Virtual Mount TBR Challenge, a challenge for reading books you do not own, hosted by Bev @ My Reader’s Block, comes to an end on 31 December.  I read 12 library books, so completing the first level – Mount Rum Doodle.

  1. Great Britain’s Great War by Jeremy Paxman
  2. Destroying Angel by S G. MacLean
  3. The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies
  4. I Found You by Lisa Jewell
  5. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
  6. Printer’s Devil Court by Susan Hill
  7. The Seeker by S G Maclean
  8. The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
  9. Dolly by Susan Hill
  10. The Riviera Set by Mary S Lovell
  11. A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh
  12. Our Betty by Liz Smith
This is My Life According to Books, using titles from my list: 
  1. My Ex is/was [a] Destroying Angel
  2.  My best friend is The Tea Planter’s Wife
  3. Lately, at work [it’s been like] Great Britain’s Great War
  4. If I won the lottery, [I’d join] The Riviera Set
  5. My fashion sense [is] A Lovely Way to Burn
  6. My next ride [will be with] Our Betty
  7. The one I love is The Seeker
  8. If I ruled the world, everyone would [be invited to] Breakfast at Tiffany’s
  9. When I look out my window, I see Printer’s Devil Court
  10. The best things in life are [because] I Found You

My Books of the Decade

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

I like the idea other bloggers have had to list their ‘books of the decade’, so here is my list, with links to my posts (some are very short notes). These are books I’ve read during the decade and loved, but not necessarily books that were published during the decade. They are all books that kept me wondering what happens next, that kept me engrossed, that have remained in my memory ever since I read them and that in ideal world I’d like to re-read. And, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg as there are many more that I could have chosen.

This list shows I like a lot of fiction, mainly historical and crime fiction with a few non-fiction books as well. Which books would you have on your list?

 

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Classics Club
The spin number in The Classics Club Spin was announced yesterday. It’s number … 13

which for me is Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by January 31, 2020.

Charles Dickens oliver twist etc

I’m delighted with this as I’ve been meaning to read it for years and never got round to it.

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers with its depiction of a dark criminal underworld peopled by vivid and memorable characters – the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic romance, the Newgate novel and popular melodrama, Oliver Twist created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

This is my last post until after Christmas, so I’m wishing you all a very …

Christmas bells

The Woman Who Wanted More by Vicky Zimmerman

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Woman who wanted more

Zaffre|30 May 2019|448 pages|e-book via NetGalley|Review copy|3*

Publishers’ blurb:

Two lonely women.

An unlikely friendship.

And one big life lesson: never be ashamed to ask for more . . .

After a major life upheaval on the eve of her 40th birthday, a reluctant Kate Parker finds herself volunteering at Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies. There she meets 97-year-old Cecily Finn. Cecily’s tongue is as sharp as her mind but she has lost her spark, simply resigning herself to the Imminent End.

Having no patience with Kate’s plight, Cecily prescribes her a self-help book with a difference – it’s a 1957 cookery manual, featuring menus for anything life can throw at ‘the easily dismayed’. Will Kate find a menu to help her recover from her broken heart? If Kate moves forward, might Cecily too?

The cookbook holds the secrets of Cecily’s own remarkable past, and the story of the love of her life. It will certainly teach Kate a thing or two.

So begins an unlikely friendship between two lonely and stubborn souls – one at the end of her life, one stuck in the middle – who come to show each other that food is for feasting, life is for living and the way to a man’s heart is . . . irrelevant!

My thoughts:

The Woman Who Wanted More by Vicky Zimmerman begins very slowly and I soon felt this wasn’t a book for me. For a start it’s romantic fiction written in the present tense. Then there is Kate, who is nearly 40, single but preparing to move in with her boyfriend, Nick. But on holiday he tells her that he doesn’t want the commitment and she ends up back home living with her mother. Despite her friends’ warnings that he is not worth the bother, she still gives him chance after chance of starting again. And she goes on and on and on about him.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Cecily meets Kate! Cecily is 97 living in Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies, a grumpy old lady with intense brown eyes and a sharp tongue. When she hears Kate’s story about her relationship with Nick she tells her in no uncertain terms to give him short shrift and to find a man who isn’t too emotionally stunted to love her.

I was thinking of not finishing this book until Cecily came on the scene. After getting off to a bad start, with several cross words, Kate and Cecily get to know each other better and Cecily’s cookery book gives her some helpful advice mixed in with recipes. And when I got to the end of the book and read the Author’s Note I understood why Cecily’s part of the story appeals to me more – the character was inspired by a real person, Vicky Zimmerman’s grandmother. The book is a mix of fact and fiction – and for me Cecily’s story had the ring of truth. I’m glad I read on to the end.

My thanks to the publishers for my review copy via NetGalley.

Our Betty: Scenes from my Life by Liz Smith

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Our Betty

Simon & Schuster UK| New Ed edition (5 Mar. 2007)|240 pages|Library book|3*

Description from Goodreads:

Liz Smith is one of Britain’s much loved character actresses. This is her life story – from her cosseted yet lonely childhood with her beloved grandparents, through the war, marriage and children, divorce and poverty, long years working in dead-end jobs to her big break at the age of fifty.

From the back cover:

In her brilliantly quirky memoirs Liz Smith tells the hanuting story of her bitter-sweet pre-war childhood’ Daily Mail

These evocative scenes from Lincolnshire life are as good as anything in a Beryl Bainbridge novel. Liz Smith … is our greatest character actress. Her genius is to give all those grotesques and cartoons a measure of her own perky, quirky nature and generous soul. Daily Express

Typically idiosyncratic …shot through with shafts of broad comedy. It’s difficult not to gobble it all up in one go. Sunday Telegraph

From Wikipedia:

Betty Gleadle MBE (11 December 1921 – 24 December 2016), known by the stage name Liz Smith, was an English character actress, known for her roles in BBC sitcoms, including as Annie Brandon in I Didn’t Know You Cared (1975–79), the sisters Bette and Belle in 2point4 Children (1991–99), Letitia Cropley in The Vicar of Dibley (1994–96) and Norma Speakman (“Nana”) in The Royle Family (1998–2006). She also played Zillah in Lark Rise to Candleford (2008) and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the 1984 film A Private Function.

My thoughts:

I loved the first part of this book as Liz Smith recalls scenes from her childhood. She was born almost a century ago now and the pictures she paints of her childhood in her words and in her little pen and ink sketches reveal a world so far removed from life as we know it today. She gives an excellent portrait of life between the two world wars. Her mother died when she was two and when she was seven her father left home and she never saw him again. She was brought up by her grandparents.

She writes in short sections telling about her home, how she loved going to the pictures, about the neighbours and the shops, about Christmas, the games she played, her first day at school, summer days, riding her bicycle, learning to be a dressmaker and then what she did during WW2 and her life after the war and becoming an actress.

I had thought before I read the book that it would have been all about her life as an actress, but I’m glad it isn’t. Although I was interested to read about the people she worked with in the various parts she played it was no where nearly as fascinating to me as her early years. It is quirky, funny in parts but also sad and moving.

Reading challenges: this is the 12th library book I’ve read this year and completes my Virtual Mount TBR challenge for the year.