Word: simenon
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...GEORGES SIMENON is the most prolific writer living, the famed mystery story-teller of over 400 novels and creator of the diffident Commissaire Maigret of the Quai des Orfevres Criminal Brigade. His first novel, which appeared in 1923, was written in one week to meet a publisher's deadline, and in succeeding years he has never deviated from that schedule, nor from the plot format he first laid down. This methodical grinding out of thrillers has made him the best-selling French author ever, a kind of freak of technique in the publishing world, and has earned him millions...
This was hardly the passing of a literary giant, though at various times Jean Cocteau, Henry Miller, C.P. Snow, and Andre Gide each admired Simenon's slick perfection of the roman policier genre. Yet it was a curious change for a man in his seventies, a change made still more curious in the next year by the sale of his estates, the disruption of his supremely sedate life, and the abandoning of his ordered creative habits. Something new in his writing seemed to be in the offing; like one of those inconsistencies that pop up so frequently in his novels...
Letter to My Mother, one of the products of this new labor, has appeared in English, so that we can now begin to assess the "new Simenon." Actually, it is a question of reassessing the old hackneyed Simenon, for nothing has really changed. Letter to My Mother is a new sort of detective story, a kind of confessional mystery, predicated on the notion that human relationships are indeed hard to understand, that they take time to decipher, are full of profound feelings, etc. Unfortunately, this new kind of puzzle isn't nearly as interesting as a good murder mystery...
...AGED Mme. Simenon lies dying in a hospital. Her son, the author, comes to her side, and discovers that in spite of his 70 years he doesn't understand her. In the week that passes before death arrives, he tries to penetrate to the "truth" of his mother and of their bond, to "solve" that cliched jigsaw puzzle of filial love. Sitting silently across from her, he tortures himself with questions: "Why did my mother distrust me?"; "Why did she marry my father?"; "What was her youth like?"; "What did she think when...
However, what Simenon understands to be answers are actually more questions. He relates an anecdote, but concludes it interrogatively...