glancer

I read this in its entirety in one stretch this morning sitting in a depressing, fluorescent-lit room of Beckettian absurdity. I mean I was performing my civic duty by serving in a jury pool. Anyway, the day before I was at Vertigo and picked it up for 4 bucks from their sale rack, thinking those long hours of purgatory would be all the more easily passed with some fine, gritty Paris noir, no doubt some lithe sex and murder too and maybe a few bons mots. I didn't expect Simenon to be such a gripping writer. This translation is spare, dark, vivid. There is some fine scene painting, too, small details that are placed carefully in the usually brief paragraphs that save them from too much sparseness and make scenes come alive. There is only minimal dialogue, the story is told by character's behaviors, the changes in their faces, the position and gait of their bodies, their interaction with their surroundings. I love how Paris in this book is made up almost entirely of sounds, there are whole passages where a character does nothing but listen to the ambient sounds of the city coming through the thin walls of the apartment complex. I also love the parallel of the detectives persistently trailing Hire and Hire doubling them in his pursuit of the dairy girl. The watcher being watched by watchers, the prey also in pursuit. Nothing profound here, just a really pleasing, well-executed crime story that is and isn't a crime story, and it got me through the morning hours of jury duty, which is all I really asked of it.

2022-11-14 17:53