The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Classic Detective fiction

Source – Personal copy

I was inspired by Simon Savidge in his Halloween read the video or something he did when he mentioned this book and then spent the day hunting my old Puffin copy, which is 40 yers old and when I found it as some books are still out of place in the shelves from the move. I looked at it and felt it was time to retire it to the shelf and get a new copy, so I brought a Penguin Clothbound copy. I then decided to try and find a Film version of the book I hadn’t seen and found a 1972 TV movie with Stewart Granger; I have watched so many versions of the novella, each missing bits of the book, some stick closely to the book, others drift away. This was near to the novella in most of the action. I think it is maybe the most filmed Holmes Story or Novella.

Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearthrug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.’ It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a ‘Penang lawyer’* Just under the head was a broad silver band, nearly an inch across. To James Mortimer, MRCS, from his friends of the CCH’, was engraved upon it, with the date ‘1884. It was just a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry

– dignified, solid, and reassuring.

Well, Watson, what do you make of it?”

The opening and the Cane left behind and what is the CCH ?

The book starts with one of the best pieces of deduction by Holmes, a Cane left by Doctor Mortimer at which is looked at first by Watson as Holmes sees him in the teapot and asks him to describe the owner. This is a classic piece of deduction. A silver label makes Watson think it is from the hunt and that he is an older country doctor. But when Holmes looks, he sees it very differently, and the young doctor and his dog appear just as he has described him. They learn about the Myth of the Baskervilles from the doctor and the death of the most recent Baskerville and lord of the manor Sir Charles. This is connected to a family curse of an evil hound, bringing death to the family. The doctor then says h had seen a huge paw print by the dead body. Hilmes says what has a curse to do with him, the new Lord Sir Henry is due to arrive. We all know the story they meet. Holmes takes the case but is busy, and he sends Watson to be his observer. The Dartmoor is imposing and full of places of mystery and quick mud. An escaped prisoner, several residents around the Baskerville property a man who sues people (he is often missed in the films !). Then Stapleton, the other main character, and his sister, but are they who they seem. Then the two servants in the house, The butler and his wife, what is their secret. Who is the body they see at night, and where is Holmes when all this is happening.

Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles’s nervous system was strained to breaking-point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart – so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound.The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.

The Hound had haunt the dead Baskerville but who had feed that fire of worry ?

It is fair to say I love this Holmes it is my second favourite of them all, the first being the short story The Blue Carbuncle. Both share deductions and also a sense of tracking down a story. The main thing about Hounds of the Baskerville is there is very little Holmes. He is there at the start when he sends Watson to go to Devon with Sir Herny t watch and report all he sees and tells Watson to be wary at night, and then we see him in the last part of the book. The book is made up of reports Watson had made his observations. But as we learn, Holmes had observed those events as well in a twist at the end. It is a good take on the epistolary novel. It is also a classic for this time of year as the Moor Dartmoor adds atmosphere to the names of the places, and the sense of forbidding Doyle conjures up in the story. Perfect for a Halloween read and worth a revisit as ever, this must be the 20th plus time I have reread this book, usually this time of year. I will also try and find any more film versions I may have missed of this.

Have you a book you reread and reread?

Winston’s score A+ is still as good now as when it came out, and it sends shivers down your spine in places.

The Shining by Jon Fosse

The Shining by Jon Fosse

Norweigan fiction

Original title – Kvitleik

Translator – Damion Searls

Source – Personal copy on kindle

Well, this is the first book after Fosse won the Nobel. I did a short post on the day he won the prize. I had reviewed three books from him before the Prize, the first of his septology, Aliss in the Fire and Scenes from a childhoood. I had read the other two parts of Septology and as I often do, hadn’t got to review them. As I said in my last post, my dreams of blogging more often fall short, but I am getting there, so this isn’t me moaning it is just a fact of life I read more than I can possibly ever review, but yes, this is my sixth book by Jon Fosse and to be truthful, I loved this it is a short book 48 pages in the paperback so in comparison to his other books this is actually probably the favourite I have read from him. Although at some point, I will go back and read septology in a single bite. Anyway, I was going to wait for this, and then I listened to the Mookse and the Gripes podcast with the translator about Jon Fosse, and I just had to get it so for quickness, I got it on the Kindle as it is about the length I can read on kindle.

What am I talking about, I thought. There’s the forest in front of me, it’s just a forest, I thought. All right then, this sudden urge to drive off somewhere had brought me to a for-est. And there was another way of talking, according to which something, something or an-other, led, whatever that might mean, to something else, yes, something else. I peered into the forest in front of me. Forest. Yes.Trees right next to one another, pines, pine trees.

He questions his action heading down the path

The book is in the mind of a man who has, for some reason, headed down a forest track, turning off the main road. He is in his car, and then he gets stuck on the path. As he does, he thinks about the points he could have turned back. Then he initially stays in the car warm and just waits for someone to come. Then he decides to head into the forest it is turning to night but he feels to drawn into the forest. He then starts to see a glow in the distance. What is it as he is drawn to the light, the light seems to come closer and closer. But what are these lights?He seems drawn to the lights and maybe is in a moment of his life is he alive, or is this his soul drifting you are never quite sure if this is real or imagined. Then it moves on when he reaches the lights, but that would spoil a 48-page book to say more it is wonderfully evocative.

No reason at all. And so why did I drive onto the forest road then. It was purely by accident, maybe. Pure chance.Yes,you probably couldn’t call it anything else.

But chance, what’s that anyway.No, I can’t start in with that kind of silly thinking. It never goes anywhere. And what I have to do now is get my car free, yes, just that. And then I have to try to turn it around. But that.Yes it’s because I didn’t pass anywhere I could turn the car around, if I had then of course I would’ve turned around, a long time ago, because the forest road is pretty much the most boring road to drive on that you can imagine.

He is maybe in a altered state I wondered at times or has something alse happened to him ?

I loved the short nature of this after the septology it is like a  palate cleanser in a meal, it is full of Fosse but intense and just a mouthful of him. I love the otherworldly ness of the lights, and the events after the lights appear in the forest. The forest has long been a place for things happening but also the mind to wander from the tropical Jungle of Wilson Harris and the way spirits and the forest can talk to you. Through things like Twin Peaks which is what I thought of her I had to wonder if a log lady would turnup there is also a sense of the spiritual of been between worlds what has happened to draw him down the forest road and why did the car break down? Why wander off these are all questions unanswered about our narrators actions. Have you read this the first of his books to come out after his Nobel win this year.

Winstons score – A an Espresso shot of Fosse

Maigret and the Saturday Caller by Georges Simenon

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.

 

 

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

American Memoir

Source – Personal copy

When I read the list of books I could read for the club 1962, I looked at one book that leapt of the page to read, and that was this one another reread. Unlike Kerouac, this is a road trip like his books are but this is from one of my all-time favourite writers, Steinbeck he just stood for so much his books we social commentaries on time and covered the tougher side of life. He captured an America that is now gone, and in this book he tries to do that. I do think he picks his tales here and it is, in a way, a modern tale. I love the idea of van Life is something that appeals to me the ability to go here and there every day, and this is what he did he took out his camper he’d called Rocinante after Quixotes horse. Now the companion for his trip was his blue French poodle Charley as he turns sixty, Steinbeck wants to see the small villages and towns of America before they go.

We didn’t give George any trouble because for two nights we stayed in Rocinante, but I am told that when guests sleep in the house George goes into the pine woods and watches from afar, grumbling his dissatisfaction and pouring out his dis-like. Miss Brace admits that for the purposes of a cat, whatever they are, George is worthless. He isn’t good company, he is not sympathetic, and he has little aesthetic value.

“Perhaps he catches mice and rats,” I suggested helpfully.

“Never,” said Miss Brace. “Wouldn’t think of it.

And do you want to know something? George is a girl.”

I had to restrain Charley because the unseen presence of George was everywhere. In a more enlightened day when witches and familiars were better understood, George would have found his, or rather her, end in a bonfire, because if ever there was a familiar, an envoy of the devil, a consorter with evil spirits, George is it.

George the Cat from his friends at Deer Island

The book starts with him explaining why he decided to make this trip a last chance to capture a world slowly going in fact, at the time, it maybe was nearly gone when he did the trip. He shows how he got Rocinate ready. His family wanted to go, but ultimately, he chose the dog as his companion and set off around the States. Nearly losing the camper and his boat in a storm on the eve of the trip, he sets off. He says he is just a guy, not Steinbeck, the famous writer but some ordinary Joe on a road trip with his dog. he notes how he uses the dinners and radio to get the feel of the places in Maine as he drives through this has one of my favourite parts of the book he visit someone he knows on Deer island that is the owner of a grey cat that is the least cat like cat he has ever meet harte people and dogs and make any guest at the house feel unwelcome even when he isn’t in the room. He meets migrant workers from Canada and compares how they pack the farm up to what English families did in Kent every summer when they went hop-picking. He likes to blend with the common man at truckstops, nearly getting shot, then having a coffee with a game warden on an estate. s he winds around the country, retreading ground in his old home of  Salinas, lamenting the changing country and the way it has become upper class no more fish guts on the beach from the canneries; he also laments the way this is the way the country ad a whole is changing as the freeways disconnect towns and everything becomes the same like the way people speak till he gets to  Texas where he notes how separate all Texans still are and how individual they can be. He laments what has gone from the America of his youth.

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”

His thoughts on Texas.

Well, I could go on I love this writer and this book so much. I think he has rose-coloured glasses in a way and has picked maybe the best tales of this trip, but he has also caught what has gone the lament of the loss of language accents and identity between towns is all something we see more and more, and since his day every town is the same with the same shops and restaurants etc. What he also captures is migrant workers from those from Quebec to those he used to know in Monterey who have now moved on from when he wrote Cannery row (my favourite novel by him) . I must try Geert Mak’s book, where a few years ago he retraced this trip and saw how the country was now. This captured America before Vietnam, but post-Korea, that golden glow of the post-war years is fading. This is like a Norman Rockwell painting of a book, but you can see just at the edges of the images he paints the world he loved, and we get corporate America. I even forgot to mention the visits to the vet well that is for you to find out. Have you read this?

Winstons score A I love steinbeck and lament the loss of his world even if it is a bit overly romantic.

Conversation of Three wayfarers by Peter Weiss

Conversation of the three wayfarers

German fiction

Original title – Das Gespräch der drei Gehenden

Translator –  E B Garside

Source – Personal copy

A big dig into the books that came out in 1962, and I found this it is a writer I had heard a little about but hadn’t gotten to, and this book seemed perfect it is just 90 pages long. Peter Weiss was a member of the post-war gruppe 47 Writers in Germany, but he left Germany in 1939 and lived in Sweden with his family he was one of the most avant-garde writers of his generation he wrote for the stage and novels. He is maybe one of the writers in his generation who should have been better known to the English-speaking world.In the post-war years, he was a critical voice in a lot of the events of the sixties, Cuba and Vietnam being two of them. He is a writer that was hard to pigeonhole. He had been compared at times to Roman Noveau writers and absurdist writers like Beckett.

That ring res big did nothing bus ily walk

leather caps and long raincoats, they called themselves Abel, Babel and Cabel, and while they walked they talked to each other. They walked and looked around and saw what there was to see, and they talked about it and about other things that had happened. When one was talking the two others kept still and listened or looked around and listened to something else, and when one of them had finished saying what he had to say, the second one spoke up, and then the third, and the others listened or thought about something else.

They had stout boots for walking, but they carried only as much with them as would fit into the pockets of their clothes, as much as they could quickly lay their hands on and put away again. Since they looked alike they were taken for brothers by passersby, but they were not brothers at all, they were only men who walked walked walked, having met each other by chance, Abel and Babel, and then Abel, Babel and Cabel. Abel and Babel had met each other on the bridge,

The opening lines of the book and you see how the brothers merge into one at times.

The book is a strange one it is about three brothers called Abel, Babel and Cabel. We spend time as they tell tales of the wanderings. But we never quite know who is talking to us and that we seem to drift in time over the years. As three men recount events. We see a bridge, but even before the bridge is there, the brothers are talking to the Ferryman about his son, his life and the world he lives in. Then a tale of crossing to marry his bride he got pregnant. Then other odd tales of men wandering with just a slipper to fix something. These are odd snippets of everyday life told in a way that makes you, as a reader drawn into the book. The book has no real plot it has sections narrated by different narrators, be we never know which of the brothers it is telling the tale.

Once, in the summertime, a party of guests came running down to the shore, many threw off their clothes, others jumped into the water with their clothes on, and some of them swam out, one of them coming toward him. The ferryman sat still in his boat and saw how the head in the water was drawing nearer, with the mouth making soft blowing sounds. The swimmer came up to the side of the boat, the ferryman already could see the whites of his eyes shining, and the swimmer’s hands stretched out, and the body came after them, and Jym was standing in the boat, bolt upright, naked, dripping.

He stood there for some seconds, or minutes, the ferryman did not tell me just how long, then he again dived into the water, headfirst, swam back to the shore.

The Ferryman one of the main characters in the tales they tell.

This is a book that needs to be short as it makes your mind spin the way it drifts, but it all seems to flow and not jar, which is a wonderful job of the writer and the translator to keep it feeling like that. I was imagining the time traveller in H G Wellls Time traveller as he drifts through time and things appear and disappear. I loved the passage with the ferryman, a job long gone, a man who saw people across a river daily. We see his world and his sons, who he feels will follow him to be ferrymen. But then there is a bridge that is new than old. Time flows forward and back in the book. He also has a clever way of seeing little details like the sound of the ferry, those little trinkets we can all recount that noise and smell we remember of a mundane event. This is a flat book but with these little gems scattered through it. An odd book and a little gem Have you read Peter Weiss.

Winston’s score – A He should be better known a writer who is unique in his style.

 

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

America fiction

Source – personal copy

I had looked down the list of books from 1962, and I had quite a few on my shelves, so I decided rather than buy in books I had before for some other clubs. So this is a reread, a rare reread, but I read it in my teens, and I think I may have reread it when I got the current copy I have of this book it. I was a hge fan of Kerouac, but I tried last year to read a copy of On the Road I had been sent. Honestly, I just couldn’t get into it. I often hear people talking about books feeling different at various readings and ages, but I wonder if we grow out of writers. I think Kerouac is a writer a lot of males in their late teens fall in love with his sense of adventure and rule-breaking appeals at that age. His books are largely autobiographical, and this is the same with this book which followed three visits he had made to a cabin in Big Sur. He maybe managed to catch him as a writer with drug issues as, over the three visits to the cabin in the woods, he seems to have become more drug-addicted, and his sanity is drifting.

“And in the flush of the first few days of joy I confidently tell myself (not expecting what I’ll do in three weeks only) ‘no more dissipation, it’s time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that’s it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters, walk around, no more self-imposed agony…it’s time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time…Yay, for this, more aloneness

I like this description of Big sur and the effect on him.

Jack Duluoz, who is basically Kerouac himself, is a beat writer starting to gain success as a writer and the pressure that follows that so much. He decides he needs to escape the city, and his friend Lorenzo (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) has a cabin in Big Sur, so he heads up there. He is trying to capture the sense of solitude and nature (I felt he was trying to do a  Walden in a way back to nature and clear his mind after the first visit we follow him back to the city, but this is a man who is starting to fray at the edges his drinking is increasing and mental health is suffering as he deals with his friend Cody and his wife Bily who is struggling with her own mental health issues. As his mind starts to drift, he goes back, but the other visit, the sense he got on the first visit is gone in fact, they make him worse this is a man struggling with the bottle and the pressure of fame. In a way, this may be one of the first novels that deals with celebrity, as Kerouac is writing about his struggles with the bottle and his own sanity at times.

Any drinker knows how the process works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if you pass up the meal and go on to another night’s drunk, and wake up to keep the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there’ll come one day when the drinks wont take effect because you’re chemically overloaded and you’ll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in ― Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death)… well, there’s more of that up later.

This quote aout drinkers remind me of my 20s I drank to much and now rarely drink but had times like these.

Like most of his novels, he wrote this book in a few days on a roll of paper like he did On The road. He wrote this book in ten days, and there is a sense of a man struggling with fame and addiction. This is maybe the start of his downfall. He died seven years after writing this book in the early sixties, but this was maybe his last great novel, although I do love his later novellas. Now I found this okay I wasn’t as connected as I was in my twenties. I feel now it is a great portrait of fame and the price of fame but also about escaping to nature to recharge all ring true these days. I had watched the film of this a few years ago, but I remember it being a middling film as there seemed to have been a few films around the beat writer in a few years. Have you read This Kerouac or any of the others he wrote?

Winston score – B the price of fame and its effects on your mental health captured in the early days of celebrity.

Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz

Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz

Egyptian literature

Original title –  السمان والخريف

Translator – Roger Allen and revised by John Rodenbeck

Source – personal copy

When I looked at the list of books that came out in 1962, I did a deep dive and this is one that caught my eye as I’ve had the Cario trilogy sitting on my shelves for years, and I have reviewed another book by the Nobel winning Mahfouz a few years ago for the 1077 club. It also reminds me I have the Cario trilogy sitting there to read at some point. Mahfouz was the voice of his nation he wrote about the changes in his country over the 20th century. He rarely talks about his private life, marrying late in middle age, and he rarely travelled this book harks back to the Nasser regime and to 1952 written ten years after that. Even the main character in the book, ISA is an early casualty of the new regime.

But what was going on in Cairo?

There was no car to take him anywhere. In the station square, people were walking in every direction, anger on their faces, heaping curses on the British. It was cold. The sky was hidden by ominous clouds; the wind was still and lifeless. Shops were closed as if for mourning, and thick smoke rose along on the skyline.

What was going on in Cairo?

Cautiously, he began to walk, then beckoned to a man coming toward him. “What’s going on in town?” he asked.

“The last day’s come,” was the bewildered reply.

“What do you mean? Protest demonstrations?”

“Fire and destruction,” the man yelled, moving on.

From the seonc pages as Nasser moves in on Cario

 

 

Isa was a civil servant in the old regime, and he was climbing the ladder, but how was he doing that? before Nasser took over from the monarchy in Egypt. The book opens as Cario is burning as Nasser sweeps to power  He is, as he says many times in the book he is caught between the two, looking back but knowing things had to change but not wanting to be part of that. So he loses his job as he likes to take bribes and is wiped out by the change in regime. He refuses to tow the new line and is, in a way, an outcast. Alongside this, he is losing his fiance Salwa to his cousin Hasan a man who is part of the new Nasser regime. This is also like by her family as they’d p[refer her to Marry the Man on the Rise. He marries a woman who is unable to give him a child, but they have money, and this means he can live in the past in a way that he then meets and sleeps with a prostitute and gets her pregnant. This is a busy work

Hasan Ali ad-Dabbagh came in beaming. Of medium height, well built, with a square face and deep-lined features, he had a broad chin, and his clear intelligent eyes and sharp-pointed nose were very distinctive. He kissed his aunt’s hand, shook Isa’s warmly without managing to lessen the latter’s feelings of annoyance, then sat down beside him and asked for some tea. He was almost the same age as Isa but was still in the fifth grade, whereas politics had managed to push Isa up to the second. Though he had a bachelor’s degree in com-merce, the only work he’d been able to find was with the draft board.

“How are you?” Isa’s mother asked.

“I’m fine,” Hasan replied, “and my mother and sister are well too.”

Hssan maybe he embodies the new ideals ?

I feel this is a book that is maybe the exception to what we say about books. It could have been 100 pages longer. There is so much crammed in the story of Isa, but there is also so much chatting and commentary of the events of that time and how it affected people like Isa when Nasser swept to power. There is a sense of Mahfouz wanting to say so much about those years that followed and that maybe makes the later part of the book seem to drift the plot and drive we see early on as the violence sweeps Cario has died down and the book maybe tries to do to much in a short space if that makes sense. I loved the first third of this book. It really works, but then he seems to get distracted by talking about what happened rather than mixing it up with the plot. He is best when the plot and what is being said move; the later part of this felt like him unloading his feelings in the characters. But This is one of three books he wrote about those years I must try The Others at some point. Have you read Mahfouz? This is the first of my Club1962 choices

Winston’s score – is B great start, but the later section of the book is just too much about talking about what happened in a way.

The Most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

 

The Most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Senegalese fiction

Original title –  La plus secrète mémoire des hommes

Translator – Lara Vergnaud

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to have been sent this by Other press all the way from the US, which I am thankful as they have been bringing some great books in translation out the last couple of years, and this is one I had wanted to read I have toyed with the idea of Prix Goincourt project of some sort, but when I looked at the winners and availability in English for a lot of the older winners it fell apart I’m still after a project that has a lot of older books in translation in it. Anyway, I brought Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s first book, brotherhood a couple of years ago as he was on a list of up-and-coming African writers I had read a few years ago and when he won the Prix Goncourt with this his second book, I decided when offer this book I read this as he is the first francophile writer from Sub Saharan Africa to win the prize.

She entered the elevator, a terrible smile on her lips. As we rose to the thirteenth floor, I plunged, toward utter ruin.

Siga D.’s body had known, done, tried everything. What could I offer her? Where could I take her? What could I think up? Who did I think I was? Those philosophers who extol the inexhaustible virtues of erotic inventiveness never had to deal with a Siga D., whose mere presence wiped away my sexual history. How should I go about it? The fourth floor already. She won’t feel anything, she won’t even feel you enter, your body will liquefy against hers, it will trickle down and be absorbed by the sheets, by the mattress. Seventh. You won’t just drown inside of her, you’ll disappear, disintegrate, crumble, she’s going to obliterate you, and the pieces that are left will drift into the clinamen of the ancient materialists, Leucippus, Democritus of Abdera

His meeting Siga D and her power over him

The book is a novel, but at its heart is a true story it is like one of those dramas where some of the names and facts have been changed. The book focuses on a book and a writer in the novel. The book is called The Labyrinth of Inhumanity and the writer is from Senegal called T C Elimane a man in his day called the BLACK Rimbaud heralded as the voice of Africa, won the Fench literary prize Prix Renaudot but in the novel this happens in 1938 before the war. But the real tale this is partly drawn from is the 1968 winner by the Malian writer Yamboi Oulologuem. His book Bound to Violence had a claim of plagiarism against it . But in his case the editor had removed his credit that the passages are from a couple of books he had used, and that book is due out as a penguin classic soon (I will be getting that when it comes out ). So when Diegan, the main narrator of the book gets hold of this fabled book from a Senegalese writer, Siga D, the two sleep together even though she is a lot older than home, but she has a presence, and as the story unfolds as he hunts for more information about the book and the writer. That Siga D is related to the writer. Our narrator is like a book detective trying to find out what happened after T c Elimane was called a plagiarist and disappeared from sight and was never seen again he follows the years after this happened, and this takes him after the war years to South America, where he had met and mixed with the cream of Latim=n American fiction but also the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz at a point I kept thinking I can’t remember him mention in Gombrowicz Diary which I read many years ago and in one of those odd bookish eclipse moments it happened to be reading this as the new translation of Gombrowicz Possesed came out a book I had in its first translation, be interested to read and compare at some point. The book is a tale of being an African writer and how those writers are viewed, but is also a great road trip novel as we follow the trail left by Elimane.

My roommate, who refused to frequent our writers coterie (he found our mentality too bourgeois), finally read The Labyrinth of Inhumanity. His verdict was terse: “hard to translate,” which by his criteria amounted to the highest praise.

He asked me questions about the book and the author. I told him what I knew. The story intrigued him, and he told me I should visit the press archives. If I was able to gain access to certain newspapers from 1938, I might, he thought, be able to find out something. I told him that when I came to Paris eight years earlier, I had already tried to access old newspapers in search of traces of The Labyrinth of Inhu-manity. In particular, I had been hoping to read the investigation by Bollème (Brigitte) mentioned by the Reader’s Guide in its T.C. Elimane entry. All my attempts had ended in failure. Though I had discovered, in regard to Brigitte Bollème, that after a long career as a literary journalist for Revue des deux modes and publishing a few monographs, she had sat on the jury for the Prix Femina, over which she presided from 1973 to her death in 1985.

He starting down the rabbit hole of this writer and his story

Wow!!!, that is the simplest word for this book. I was blown away by it I had to keep pinching myself to remind myself that the actual book doesn’t exist as I so want to join Diegane in his journey alongside ass he finds the editors and those involved in the book he is like a New Yorker fact checker running down. I Love tracking down writers. There are many a rabbit hole I get drawn down and many a half projects on my shelves, unlike here, where he has got down and dug up the labyrinth around the book, he has answered what happened after that in a case like this is not often known the real writer didn’t quite disappear as much as Elimane does in the book . It made me want to read Yambo’s actual book. Sarr has captured the love of books readers had thrown in a road trip to the mix and just some wonderful characters along the way. I am reminded how many great Francophile and English books from Africa are forgotten or never widely known. He shows how hard it can be to break through as an African writer in the way they are discussed in part of the book in Paris. I think my love for this book should be clear I am on a golden run of books now. Have you read this or any great new voices from Senegal or elsewhere in francophile Africa?

Winston score +++++++A Gone a Little John Peel with my score as one of the best books I have read in many a year.

My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon

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 Rider by Time Krabbé

The Rider by TimKrabbé

Dutch fiction

Original title – De Renner

Translator – Sam Garrett

Source – Library book

This is one of those books that had been on my radar since the early days of the blog, I think one of the old book blogs, I Loved Back Then Parish Lantern or Inside Books, must have reviewed this Dutch masterpiece and I have seen it on the list of the best books around cycling, and I have long followed the tour de France and kept an eye on cycling so I knew one day I would read Tim Krabbé’s book. The writer himself was a competitive cyclist he had raced in France so the route he described in the book is one he would have known. Krabbé is also a well-regarded chess player and writer around chess if you follow road cycling for a long time you’d know there is a chess-like quality to making the right move and positioning yourself for the win. He came from a creative family and has written many novels he also wrote a huge 800page work of nonfiction called Friends, a chronicle about the kidnapper and murderer Ferdi Elias, who he had grown close to his wife in writing this book. A number of his books have been turned into films. This was made into a Dutch film and a less successful US film

Kléber is standing in front of me. We greet each other. I point to his bars. ‘New tape?’

He smiles apologetically. ‘For morale

Kléber is my regular training buddy. The two of us checked out the course together. We both like long races with lots of cols. But he rides for Barthélemy’s team, and sticks strictly to that during the competition.

I’m standing at the back, but it doesn’t matter. I used to think it never mattered. Until race number 145, on August 31, 1974. It was my first really long road race in the Netherlands, the Four-River Tour. A race over 175 kilo-meters, I figured, so there’s no hurry. We rode at a snail’s pace through the streets of Tiel, behind the race director’s car. Twenty-wide the riders rode, curb-to-curb, without a single gap to move up into. Strange, I thought.

One of the cyclist he knows during the race

The book is set on a single day and is in the mind of a cyclist called Tim Krabbe as he is about to do the one day Tour de Aigouat, a single-day race in France, this has also been used as a stage twice in the tour de France a race with five cols on the route (Hills), and the book describes his thoughts of the race on each kilometre but also those around him, as well as him remembering, his own cycling career. We follow his races over the years the wins, the losses, the cyclists he has ridden with the conditions and places. There is also a few nuggets of cycling history from the greats like Jacques Anquetil, who had a habit of moving the water bottle of his bike to his back pocket at the start of every climb was asked why by one of his Dutch Liutenants ask him why he did this ritual. Then we have the sad tale of Tom Simpson, the British rider who died on one of the stages of the Tour de France. As the race continues, he talks about cyclists around him, the ones he knows he calls by their names and what they do in situations like this. That chess-like quality iof cycling the player 9cyclist know each other, but when he doesn’t, he refers to them by their team jerseys (I had to check the teas as they are older teams from before my time he used the real times of the late seventies when the race is set. As the race gets near the end, we see he is doing well, and his mind of Tim turns to how to win the race.

My sporting career: 1958

A Dutchman had won the Tour! It was Charly Gaul. In fact he was a Luxembourger, but he rode in the combined Dutch-Luxembourg team, and in Paris I had personally seen him enter the Parc des Princes. I was standing outside, by the gate, and the whole peloton came in as one. I looked for the yellow of Gaul, saw it flash by and noted his look of satisfaction.

One of the sections that he remebrs his cycling life and cycling history as well here

This book has captured how we all are when we ride, even if it is just for fun I don’t cycle as much as I had done. There was a period when I lived in Germany, I cycled every day, and that is how your mind is you are thinking about various things at once. took me back to the regular cycle I did in the Netherlands from Germany. I think he has captured the nature of cycling I said I have watched the Tour in particular since the late 80s, and I am aware of the chess-like nature to cycling, watching those other riders and how each day has twists and turns and they watch each other as that one move can changer a day just like in chess. I have only read one other novel which had cycling at its heart, and that was another Dutch novel that used Ventoux the great stage finish and climb as a location for two cycle rides a year apart. But this one just captures the peloton and how it feels to be a racer and how it is to be a great cyclist but in a pack of great cyclists, just be ordinary like most of the cyclists in the peloton thsere are only a few Anquetil, Merckx etc. This deserves the title of the best cycling novel as it is, but it is also like a thriller in the way it unwinds as the kilometres drop. This reminds me to get some of those backlist books I must find and read.

Winston score ++++ A. This is one that has gone straight into my all-time favourite books.