Penguin Island by Anatole France

Satire in the tradition of Voltaire

The French writer Anatole France (1884–1924) won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel Penguin Island, published in 1909, is probably his best-remembered work, at least in the minds of English-language readers. In this comedic and critical novel, France establishes himself as the inheritor of Voltaire’s role as the great satirist of French literature.

Some time in the Middle Ages, a Breton monk named Maël (later Saint Maël) decides it is his mission to sail forth to unknown lands and spread the gospel of Christ to the savages. His boat drifts way off course, and he ends up in the Southern Hemisphere, where he lands on an island full of penguins. At 99 years of age, with failing sight and hearing, Maël thinks the penguins are an Indigenous race of people, so he baptizes them into the Catholic Church. The only witnesses to this sacrament are God and His angels in Heaven, who debate how to rectify Maël’s erroneous baptism of animals. God solves the problem by turning all the penguins into humans, albeit naked uncivilized humans. Maël then tows the Penguins back to Europe, where they establish a new nation in the area of what we know as France.

Spanning centuries in the history of the Penguins, the book is divided into eight related stories taking place in eight different time periods. The early chapters of the book, in which the newly humanized penguins are learning the ways of civilization, are the most funny and entertaining. France seems to be lampooning some of the Edenic noble-savage pipe dreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, Penguin Island doesn’t aim its mocking barbs at just one target but rather scatters its shots to make different satirical points in every chapter. In this book everything is game for absurdity and worthy of tongue-in-cheek scorn.

After a while, the fact that these people started out as animals becomes irrelevant. The Penguins of Penguinia are simply another nation of humans, often a surrogate for the French. Some targets for spoofing include religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, capitalism, feudalism, gender roles and sexual inequality, various factions in the modern French political landscape, and even Dante’s Divine Comedy. The most extensive parody is directed at the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s, in which a character named Pyrot is a substitute for Dreyfus and Columban for Emile Zola. To a French reader, the characters and events being satirized in this book would be readily decipherable, but it’s not always easy for an American reader to recognize all the players of every political plot. That doesn’t become too much of an obstacle, however, because enough of the humor and derision is universal to human nature and society, not French-specific.

The early formative years of the Penguins are laugh-out-loud silly at times, but the latter, more modern episodes of their history take the form of more wryly stated indictments of hypocrisy. There is also a science fiction element to the book as the final chapters take place in the future. After all the satire and cynicism, France ends the book on a surprisingly inspirational note of hope. Penguin Island is a work of great insight and much wisdom, but perhaps presented too cleverly for the non-French reader to grasp all in the first read. I think I’ll give it a second look, eventually, because it seems worthy of further scrutiny.   

Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form by Christopher Laing Hill

Zola’s effect on American and Japanese literature

If you read this blog religiously (which I’m sure no one does), you’ll know that one brand of fiction that Old Books by Dead Guys really likes is Naturalism. I started this blog by reviewing the complete works of Emile Zola, Frank Norris, and Jack London, all of them naturalist writers. The naturalist movement, spearheaded by Zola, was an offshoot of realism. It’s known for hyper-detailed and brutally objective descriptions of settings and social milieus. Naturalist authors often have an atheistic bent; they emphasize how human lives are influenced and governed by scientific laws of evolution and heredity, physiology, sociology, and psychology. I’m a well-read fan of French and American literary naturalism and have started to branch out into the naturalist literature of other nations. Wanting to learn more about naturalist authors in other parts of the world led me to Christopher Laing Hill’s 2020 book Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form. This book, published by Northwestern University Press, is available as an open access publication, meaning you can download a pdf ebook for free (or you can purchase a print copy).

What I was hoping to get out of Hill’s book was an international list of authors and books for further reading, and I certainly got that. Some of those books may have never been translated into English, but if even a quarter of them are, they ought to keep me busy reading for years. Hill focuses primarily on French, American, and Japanese literature because he reads in those languages. The bulk of the book is comparing novels from those nations to show how Zola’s ideas spread from country to country. His detailed examination of works by Zola, London, Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Kosugi Tengai, and Tayama Katai brings up many interesting and thought-provoking points. Like most literary critics, Hill gives away the endings of all the novels he discusses, but I’ve already read all the French and American books, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever read the Japanese. In addition, Hill does mention and briefly discuss many other works from other countries. He gives particularly good overviews of Spanish and Latin American naturalism and East Asian naturalism. Hill says almost nothing about British and German literature, but he does reference plenty of naturalist authors from other European nations such as Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia. 

Having an avid interest in this subject, I naturally liked much of what Hill had to say. As a nonacademic, however, I can’t say I like the way he says it. Hill is a PhD writing for other PhDs, and the text is the jargon-heavy academic prose you’d expect for an audience of specialized professors. It drives me nuts how many words are used to make a point, how many times the points are made over and over again, and the pretentious, obscure vocabulary (ugh, the title). The word “figure” is used over 400 times to mean just about anything and everything. There are chapters on “the body figure” (anatomical imagery), “the Nana figure” (sexually liberated and/or independent women), and “the social figure” (just about any time and place, as far as I can tell). When Hill comments on the work of other Zola scholars, he points out exceptions to any proffered thesis as if to nullify its value. He then seems hesitant to say anything concrete himself for fear that his arguments will be likewise picked apart. Every statement has to be made with heterogenous multiplicity, so that nothing can ever be nailed down as fact, theory, or even an explicit opinion. 

Naturalist literature can be enjoyed and appreciated by nonacademic readers, not just the intelligentsia within academia. As intended by the author, this scholarly monograph only addresses the latter category. For the nonacademic audience, if nothing else, the bibliography and the index suggest myriad opportunities for further reading. With this blog I try to turn a few readers on to some readworthy naturalist literature, and hopefully the knowledge I’ve gleaned from Figures of the World will help me do that.

The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon

A jolly, bedridden Maigret

The Madman of Bergerac is the 16th book in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret detective novels. It was first published in 1932 as Le Fou de Bergerac. Traveling by train to visit his friend Leduc, who lives in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, Maigret spends the night in a sleeping car. He has trouble sleeping, partially due to the man in the berth above him, who won’t stop fidgeting and intermittently sobs. The stranger descends from his compartment, and Maigret sees him jump from the moving train. Without really knowing why—driven by a detective’s instinct I suppose—Maigret jumps off the train in pursuit. When the mystery man discovers he’s being followed, he fires a shot at Maigret, wounding him in the shoulder.

Maigret wakes up in a hospital in Bergerac, a small city in the Dordogne. He is soon moved to a hotel on the town square, where he receives outpatient medical treatment, as well as the loving care of Madame Maigret. Maigret spends the rest of the novel in bed, but still manages to conduct an investigation into the man who shot him. In addition, a serial killer is afoot in Bergerac. Two women were strangled to death and stabbed post mortem in the heart by some kind of needle-like instrument. From his bed, Maigret meets and questions various citizens of Bergerac. Despite being confined to his hotel room, he is able to form a picture of the town and uncover some of the hidden secrets of its citizens.

Although Sherlock Holmes or C. Auguste Dupin sometimes solved crimes without ever leaving their chairs, an immobile Maigret is an oddity in the series. His bedridden convalescence leads to a lot of second-hand action. Important events take place “offstage,” and Maigret and the reader only find out about them through indirect accounts. Also unusual is how uncharacteristically jolly Maigret is throughout this book. He seems to be having the time of his life solving crimes from his bed. He enjoys tormenting the suspects and making them squirm. The phrase “madman of Bergerac” is coined to refer to the killer, but some of the mystified Bergeraciens sometimes wonder if Maigret himself might have a screw or two loose.

I got hooked on this novel from the get-go, and it held my rapt attention for the first several chapters. I found the ending a little disappointing, however. In pursuing the case, Maigret is more interested in the private lives of his adversaries rather than the fact that people have been murdered, which is treated almost as an afterthought. As usual, Simenon has developed a compelling back story for his characters, a family drama drawn with psychological authenticity. It seems to me, however, that I’ve seen elements of this conclusion in other Maigret novels (Repetition between books, of course, would depend on the order in which you read them, which in my case has been kind of random). Also, the ending seems to materialize out of thin air. Simenon doesn’t leave a lot of bread comes for the reader to follow. There doesn’t seem to be much cause and effect between investigative work and final revelations. The bed-bound Maigret just seems somewhat omniscient.

Though The Madman of Bergerac is not the best Maigret, any Maigret is good Maigret. Compared to the consistent quality of the Maigret books, this one falls a little short, but it’s still better than the vast majority of detective fiction out there.

Marthe by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Nana’s little sister

French author Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) published about two dozen books over the course of his literary career, but less than half of those have been translated into English. His first novel, Marthe: The Story of a Girl, was published in 1876. Huysmans writes in a naturalist style, a form of anti-romantic social realism that stresses unflinching descriptive detail. The Naturalist school of literature was founded by Emile Zola, who, upon reading Marthe, took Huysmans under his wing and mentored his early career. Of all of Zola’s protégés and imitators, Huysmans is the writer whose style most closely matches the master, at least for the first several years of his career. Judging by this impressive debut novel, Huysmans had already found his mature naturalist literary style before availing himself of Zola’s mentorship.

Marthe is born in Paris, the daughter of a painter and a factory worker. By the age of 15, both of her parents have died, leaving Marthe to care for herself. Like her mother before her, she works in an artificial pearl factory, crafting the fake jewels from powdered fish scales and glue. The pay is poor, the job is bad for her health, and she is surrounded by young women coworkers who regale her with tales of their dissolute lifestyles and licentious activities. She is discovered by a cabaret impresario who invites her to join the showgirls at a sleazy local theatre, and it is not long before Marthe learns that she can make a living by selling her body. From there, Marthe’s career runs the sexworker gamut from burlesque dancer to literal prostitute to a kept woman, the mistress of a sugar daddy. Along the way she meets Léo, a struggling poet and journalist, and the pair embark on a roller-coaster romance. Portions of the book are based on Huysmans’s own youthful love affair with a lady of the night.

Not long after Marthe, Zola published his own novel about a Parisian harlot, the classic Nana (1880). Zola’s novel is much more epic in scale and grander in scope than Marthe, which is a very short novel and intimate in its focus, similar to Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). Zola makes Nana the high-class of whore of Babylon who has all the powerful men of Paris wrapped around her finger, while Marthe is a more realistic garden-variety prostitute, the girl next door gone bad like so many poverty-stricken urban women of her age. Despite Naturalism’s pretensions of brutally scientific realism, Zola would exaggerate elements of his novels for dramatic effect. Huysmans, on the other hand, would exaggerate elements of his novels for repulsive effect. In the three books I’ve read by him, he seems to go out of his way to disgust, put off, and offend his audience. In Marthe, for example, Huysmans’s descriptions of a low-rent flophouse and a sleazy back alley are so loaded with sordid detail you might want to put the Kindle down and sanitize your hands. There are also some pretty racy sex scenes in this book, not too graphic by today’s standards but enough to be considered pornographic in the 1870s. Not surprisingly, the book was banned. Charged with obscenity in France, Huysmans had the book published in the more free-wheeling Belgium.

Among English-language audiences, Huysmans is better-known for his novels Au Rebours (Against Nature or Against the Grain) and Là-Bas (Down There or The Damned, a novel about Satan worship), but I found Marthe superior to them both. As an unromanticized depiction of social ills, this is a superb naturalist novel. Huysmans pulls no punches, and his prose is strikingly brilliant (at least in English translation). This is not a pleasant story, but Huysmans succeeds in viscerally immersing the reader into this sordid and squalid world. Zola is my favorite author, and I’m always look for other writers of a similar philosophy and style. Marthe is one novel in which one of the so-called lesser naturalists actually gives Maître Zola a run for his money.

The French Mind: 400 Years of Romance, Revolution and Renewal by Peter Watson

A feminine emphasis on France’s intellectual history

British historian Peter Watson has been my favorite nonfiction author since I discovered his books a couple years ago. Though he also writes fiction, Watson is better known for his sweeping intellectual histories, or histories of ideas. Watson’s book The French Mind was published in 2022. In this book, Watson tries to answer the question: What’s so special about the French? To do that, as the subtitle indicates, he examines 400 years of French history, from the early 17th century to the present. Watson’s histories are generally not about kings, queens, and wars (although the Bourbons, Orléans, and Napoleons do make prominent appearances here) but rather about important developments in literature, philosophy, the arts, and culture. In The French Mind, Watson also looks beyond such highbrow disciplines and discusses how the French came to be renowned for perfecting some enjoyable aspects of life and leisure, such as fashion, food, furniture, and sex. Unlike some of Watson’s other intellectual histories, science is not part of the discussion here (Marie Curie isn’t even mentioned), except the social sciences.

Though the USA has always had its anti-intellectual tendencies (some might say now more than ever), France has always presented a decidedly pro-intellectual attitude. High culture is fashionable among the French, and one is expected to be well-read. When I visited France, I recall being amazed at how many streets they named after philosophers, scientists, and men of letters. France has always seen it as their duty to civilize the world through its refined culture, even if that means showing a disdain for capitalism, hard science, and technological progress. A crucial aspect of French intellectual life, Watson asserts, is “sociability,” which is manifested in the long tradition of the French salon and the café culture that followed. Watson also pursues a thesis (borrowed from historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch) of France’s “culture of defeat.” Even after losing the Franco-Prussian War and undergoing Nazi occupation, the French zeitgeist still managed to turn those losses into morally righteous victories.

Another element Watson really wants to emphasize is the role that women played in the development of French culture. I knew that salons would be an important part of this story, but I didn’t expect they would be the focus of the bulk of the book. Salons, in this case, were weekly gatherings, usually hosted by aristocrats in their homes, at which intellectuals and artists would gather and exchange ideas. Watson makes much of the women who hosted these salons and the influence they wielded. Many, probably most, of the chapters in the book focus on one of these salonnières—her life story, who she married, with whom she had affairs, and which luminaries she included among the regulars at her salon. France may have been less chauvinistic and misogynistic than the rest of Western Civilization, but it was still an unfairly male-dominated world. Despite his efforts to praise these unsung women, Watson’s feminist assertions feel forced. If the best thing he can say about many of these women is that they hosted a bunch of important men in their home, that’s not much of a feminist revelation. When these salonnières wrote published literature or wielded real political power, however, Watson does give credit where it’s due. At the point when the salons fade away, so does Watson’s feminist focus. Surprisingly, once this book moves past World War I, there’s barely a female mentioned other than Simone de Beauvoir.

Watson is a master of summary and synthesis, showing how ideas and movements spawn, influence, and interconnect one another. A master generalist, he draws the big picture in a sufficiently detailed and lively narrative that inspires the reader to want to learn more. If you really want to know what Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean Paul Sartre, or Michel Foucault were all about, you’re going to have to read their books, but with the help of an erudite survey such as Watson provides here, maybe you won’t have to read everything that came before and after those thinkers in order to understand their work. Similar to The French Mind, Watson has written other books in which he strives to encapsulate a nation’s intellectual and cultural spirit: The German Genius and The British Imagination. What’s next? The Dutch Mystique? The Scandinavian Psyche? The Polish Persuasion? Whatever Watson comes up with, I’m looking forward to it.   

The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life by Nathalie A. Cabrol

Discouraging recap of our quest for certainty

Nathalie A. Cabrol, a French-American astrobiologist, is the director of the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute (SETI = Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). She is very much qualified, therefore, to write about the latest research on extraterrestrial life. Her book The Secret Life of the Universe was published in 2023. These days, it’s hard to keep track of all the piecemeal press releases about exoplanets, unmanned space probes, Mars rovers, and such. I hoped to find in Cabrol’s book a comprehensive and intelligent recap of what we know about the possibilities of life within and without our solar system. She does a fine job of summarizing the present state of knowledge in this area. This book is generally organized from the Earth outwards, from Venus and Mars to other bodies in our solar system, and then on to the recently discovered exoplanets beyond.

Although we’re talking about other planets and stars here, astrobiology relies much on geology and meteorology—the workings of water, ice, gases, volcanism, and plate tectonics, for example. Since the life forms are unknown, Cabrol’s work, at least as revealed in this book, is more about studying environments that might be conducive to life rather than speculating about the life itself. She has deliberately written this book to be accessible to a wide audience whenever possible. In general, the text is less challenging than articles in Scientific American or National Geographic; it’s more on the level of USA Today. There are passages, however, where complex chemistry can’t be dumbed-down enough, and the lay reader may find it tough going.

In addition to filling Sagan’s role at SETI, Cabrol also tries to fill his shoes as an inspirational science communicator, but she is less successful at that. This book is educational, but it doesn’t generate a lot of excitement or a great deal of hope. As someone who cares about science and wants to learn more about the universe, I am hopeful that in my lifetime we will discover extraterrestrial life—by that I mean evidence of microbial life elsewhere in our solar system. After reading Cabrol’s book, however, I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. She points out lots of possibilities for life in our solar system, but also gives plenty of examples of why confirmation is impossible. We’ve had landers on Mars for 50 years, and we still don’t have a definitive yes/no answer on life there. For almost every other body in the solar system, Cabrol says again and again that there may be life miles beneath the surface. Given how many years and dollars it takes to develop exploratory space missions, it’s unlikely we’ll be digging that deep in the near future.

Exoplanets, and their diversity of environments, offer more hope of finding life of some kind, at whatever stage of development, but we’re nowhere close to sending a probe over light years of distance. Our only hope of discovering interstellar life is if it discovers us first. Cabrol briefly discusses UFOs, or UAPs, but that’s really outside the scope of this book, and she’s a skeptical in that department. More coverage is given to the SETI program, which is actually a number of different programs under the SETI umbrella. Not much luck there yet, either. Cabrol then goes from disappointing to depressing by closing the book with an environmentalist tirade that reminds us that we’re on the verge of rendering ourselves extinct anyway.

Scientists who take on the role of educating the public—Sagan, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and so on—generally try to inspire a sense of awe and wonder in the reader, hoping to spark their interest in the workings of the universe. Cabrol tries to do the same here, but this reader was just left feeling hopeless and kind of bored.

In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne

Short story of a utopian America

“In the Year 2889” is a short story by Jules Verne. Many literary scholars now consider this story to be the work of Michel Verne, son of Jules, but it was published under Jules Verne’s name. It is common knowledge that Michel carried on the family business by writing some “Jules Verne” novels after his father’s death. Michel never produced a classic like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days, but the quality of his work is likely on a par with some of his father’s more mediocre offerings. “In the Year 2889” was published in the February 1889 issue of The Forum, an English-language magazine, while Jules was still very much alive. Reportedly, a New York newspaper editor asked Jules to write a story depicting the world a thousand years in the future, and apparently Jules delegated that task to Michel.

The story takes place in America on the 25th of September, 2889. It depicts one day in the life of George Washington Smith, a wealthy media mogul and founder of the Manhattan Chronicle. In the 29th century, the “media” in use is the telephote, something similar to our internet in that it delvers live streaming of events, on-demand news, and video communication with family and friends. Smith, a sort of Rupert Murdoch of his age, wields enough power and influence that his enterprises stretch beyond communications to include industry, finance, and politics. As such, he is consulted by various parties for his opinion on matters of world import. Through such conversations, the reader gets a glimpse into the global politics of this future millennia. Familiarly, America and Russia are the current superpowers, with China on the rise.

Some of Verne’s predictions in this book have proven to be prescient: the internet and media empires, as already mentioned; also chemical and biological warfare, scientifically processed foods and home delivery of meals, and various systems for harnessing clean energy from the environment. Others of his prophecies are as of now still rather pie-in-the-sky in nature, yet nevertheless have since shown up in many a science fiction story: the colonization of other planets in the solar system, ubiquitous flying cars, and the ability to freeze human beings in suspended animation for thawing back to life at a later date. To readers of the 21st century, some aspects of Verne’s future forecast seem rather quaintly cautious. The narrator reports with evident satisfaction, for example, that human life expectancy has risen from 37 to 52 years.

Being a short story, and not a very long short story at that, none of these ideas is really developed very thoroughly. The text is simply a rapid-fire stream of sketchy projections. In some ways, however, that’s a relief from some of the more ponderous utopian epics from the early years of the sci-fi genre. “In the Year 2889” is brief, and it may not be entirely realistic, but it is fun. Whether it was written by Michel Verne or not, this story is totally in keeping with what one would expect from Jules, and fans of the father will enjoy this work by the son.

Tartarin of Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet

Underwhelming adventures of a comical hero

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) is a beloved writer in his native France but not so familiar to American readers. He is considered a naturalist writer, but his works tend to be lighter and more humorous than contemporaries like Emile Zola or Joris-Karl Huysmans. Daudet was born in the South of France, and his novels and stories are often set in that region of the country. One such novel is Tartarin of Tarascon, published in 1872. This book must have achieved some degree of success in France because it spawned two sequels: Tartarin on the Alps and Port Tarascon.

Tarascon is a department in the French region of Provence, near the Mediterranean Coast. Daudet describes it as a quaint, bucolic locale where hunting is the primary pastime. One resident of this district is Tartarin, a short, stocky, he-man who reads adventure novels and dreams of exploring exotic lands. He has never left Tarascon, however, and has never done anything to distinguish himself as particularly intrepid. Nevertheless, as a big fish in a small pond, the other hunters of Tarascon regard him as somewhat of a local hero. One day the circus comes to town, bringing with it a caged lion. When Tartarin steps up to the cage to regard the beast, he is heard to mutter something along the lines of, “I’d like to take a crack at one of those.” The folks of Tarascon inflate this comment into a rumor that Tartarin is planning a trip to Africa to hunt lions. After a while, the rumor becomes so insistent that Tartarin feels the only way he can save face is to make the rumor a reality.

The problem is, Tartarin is somewhat of a coward. Daudet describes him as having two personalities—part Don Quixote, the romantic hero, and part Sancho Panza, the cautious everyman. He is ill-equipped with the courage required to make an international voyage, much less hunt the king of the jungle. Feeling obligated, however, to do so, he embarks on a boat to Algeria.

This all sounds like the set-up for a funny slapstick comedy about a clumsy sad sack who stumbles his way by dumb luck through dangerous situations. The humor here, however, has not aged well, and the gags don’t inspire much laughter anymore. The jokes are so simplistic that I wondered if this were perhaps written for children. Daudet spends too much time convincing us of Tartarin’s insignificance and ineptitude. By the time he gets to anything resembling an adventure, more than half the book has already gone by. Things don’t really pick up a whole lot once Tartarin arrives in Africa, either. The hardest part about shooting a lion is finding one. Eventually, the novel is wrapped up with an ending that just feels silly and pointless.

If the plot is so sluggish, what’s the main attraction here? The character of Tartarin does inspire some sympathy. He’s an underdog the reader can root for. French readers likely would have recognized him as a certain stereotypical type of Southerner. English-language readers probably won’t get that connotation but will still recognize Tartarin as a familiar type of lovable loser who bites off more than he can chew. Such satire is not enough to bring any laughter or excitement to the proceedings, however. Like drifting down a lazy river, this book just kind of coasts along, and the ride ultimately feels inconsequential.

Là-bas (Down There) by Joris-Karl Huysmans

Shock lit from a Zola protégé

Émile Zola, founder of the French literary school of Naturalism, was often castigated by his contemporary critics for including vulgar and disgusting subject matter in his novels. Much of what was considered vulgar and disgusting in the late 19th century, however, we today would just consider realism. One of Zola’s more prominent literary protégés, however, seemed to take such criticism as a challenge and proceeded to actively court controversy and deliberately shock readers with the decadent and gruesome content of his writings. Joris-Karl (or J. K.) Huysmans (1848–1907) was the author of À rebours (Against the Grain) and Là-bas (Down There or The Damned). The latter book, published in 1891, deals with the subject of Satanism in France.

In Paris, a writer named Durtal is working on a biography of a historical figure named Gilles de Rais (1405–1440), a French baron who fought alongside Joan of Arc. Gilles de Rais was tried and executed for abducting, torturing, raping, and murdering at least 140 children. According to Durtal, these heinous crimes, which Huysmans describes in graphic detail, were acts of Satanic worship. Durtal feels that in order to truly understand Gilles de Rais, he must delve into the activities of contemporary Satanists. His investigation leads him through a series of friend-of-a-friend referrals that bring him closer to rubbing elbows with real live devil worshippers in one of their Satanic ceremonies.

Much of the story is told through dinner conversations between Durtal and his friends des Hermies, a physician; Carhaix, a church bell-ringer; and sometimes Gévingey, an astrologer. It is to these listeners that Durtal relates much of the history of Gilles de Rais that he has uncovered. When Durtal is not dining with these companions, the story turns to his love life. He receives a letter from a secret admirer, a fan of his work, and begins an amorous correspondence with her. What comes out of the conversations between Durtal and his friends is a nostalgia for medievalism in preference to the modern world. Even though they’re not satanists, they enjoy dabbling in superstitions and the occult because such matters harken back to those earlier times. A lot of supernatural conspiracy theories are brought up at the dinner table, and it’s always somewhat unclear whether Huysmans actually believes this stuff, or if these are just the thoughts of his fictional characters. It was always clear where Zola stood on religion, but I don’t know Huysmans well enough to judge his supernatural inclinations.

Judging from Là-bas, Huysmans seems to want to be the Marilyn Manson of French literature. The way he’s written this book reminds one of those heavy metal bands that try really hard to be louder, harder, and more demonic than everyone else. Even for libertine France, there is a surprising amount of indecent and risqué content for 1891: semi-graphic sex, sacrilege and blasphemy, bodily functions and feces, mass murders, rape, sodomy, pedophilia, and, of course, a lot of talk about the devil. Even when Huysmans isn’t discussing one of these topics, he goes out of his way to digress gratuitously into some off-putting subject, such as food sanitation. There is a sexual affair in this book between Durtal and a married woman, but Huysmans doesn’t even make it titillating. Instead, he describes it as the most annoying, ungratifying, and pointless love affair imaginable.

There’s a lot that’s unpleasant about Là-bas, but it is interesting. Sometimes it reads like classic Zola-esque naturalism, and sometimes it reads like a 1970s Satanic B-movie. It’s rarely boring, which is more than I can say for Huysmans’s À rebours, but I can’t really recommend this as a great work of literature.

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki

Swapping spicy stories in Spain

Jan Potocki (1761–1815) was a Polish nobleman and world traveler who published several travel memoirs in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He wrote all of his books in the French language. Potocki wrote one work of fiction, a unique and baffling picaresque novel entitled The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Portions of the book were published as early as 1805, but I don’t believe the entire novel was published until 1847, more than three decades after the author’s death.

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is similar in conception to The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron. The narrator, Alphonse van Worden, is an officer in the Walloon Guards, a unit of the Spanish Army composed of troops from Wallonia (the Southern, French-speaking, predominantly Catholic portion of Belgium). Van Worden is traveling across Spain to get to Madrid. Over the course of his trip, he accumulates a diverse group of traveling companions. Every night the party stops at an inn or a camp, where they exchange fantastic stories of their lives. The book is divided into sixty-six chapters documenting the sixty-six days of van Worden’s journey. That doesn’t mean, however, that the book is comprised of sixty-six stories. Some stories go on for dozens of chapters, and most of the stories veer off into extended digressions that amount to stories-within-stories. At one point, for example, you’re reading a gypsy chief tell the story of Don Busqueros telling the story of Señor Cornádez telling the story of a pilgrim named Blas Hervas telling the story of his father, Diego Hervas.

The tales told are not confined to Spain but take place all over Europe, the Middle East, and even Mexico. The characters represent multiple nationalities and ethnic groups. Presumably the author was a Christian, but many of the characters depicted here are Jews and Muslims. Potocki does not stoop to negative stereotypes or racism but does emphasize the exotic, mythical aspects of other races and cultures, like all Jews are mystics or all Muslims seem like they stepped out of The Arabian Nights. One recurring character is a “Wandering Jew” who is possibly immortal and relates events from the Bible as if he witnessed them firsthand. Through his characters, Potocki demonstrates an admirable breadth of knowledge. When a mathematician is telling a story, for example, Potocki discourses intelligently about geometry. When a cabalist is doing the talking, Potocki includes just enough details on the occult. Potocki even manages to work some Enlightenment philosophy and science into the narrative. The text is chock full of delightful details.

You’d never guess that this book was written in the early 19th century. Many aspects of the stories told resemble pulp fiction of a later era. One of the funny things about this novel is the number of threesomes that take place. Threesomes with cousins. Threesomes with (maybe) ghosts or demons. A foursome with mother and daughters. Potocki was certainly no prude, and the way he doubles down on shameless titillation indicates that he was no literary snob either.

This book is ingeniously constructed but unfortunately confusing as hell. The story is as complicated as The Count of Monte Cristo, but unlike Alexandre Dumas, Potocki doesn’t leave the reader enough bread crumbs to navigate what’s going on. The stories-within-stories structure is disorienting. Characters assume false identities, swap genders, or show up under different names. You have to keep track of everyone’s noble, clerical, or military titles. All of the stories are somehow connected, but how is not always clear until later in the book. In order to really make sense of this novel, one would have to take notes and draw charts, family trees, historical timelines, maps, etc. Who wants to go through all that just to read a work of fiction? I admire what Potocki has done, and I know there is more to this novel than what I got out of it, but it was an ordeal to get through. I might give this book another try someday when I’m prepared to do the work required, but for now I’m kind of glad I’m done with it.

The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680–1790 by Ritchie Robertson

An erudite, pan-European survey of the era

Ritchie Robertson is a British academic who has published several books on German literature. With his most recent book, however, Robertson has broadened his scope to encompass the pan-European movement known as the Age of Enlightenment. Published in 2021, Robertson’s book The Enlightenment is a sweeping synthesis that attempts to, and in my opinion succeeds in, providing a comprehensive summary of the era that encapsulates the intellectual and social landscape of the period.

Not surprisingly, Robertson focuses primarily on France, Britain, and Germany, but he does often reach farther afield into many other European nations, demonstrating that this was a truly continent-wide phenomenon. The United States doesn’t get a great deal of coverage. Jefferson and Franklin are occasionally discussed, and there’s a brief section on the American Revolution. Rather than examining specific nations or specific thinkers in turn, this book is organized thematically by issue or discipline. The result is much rapid jumping around among diverse locations and historical personages, but this approach helps in gaining an understanding of the overall zeitgeist and important debates in Enlightenment thought. Figures like Immanuel Kant, David Hume, or Voltaire are mentioned in almost every subchapter. If you wanted to get an overall picture of Kant’s thought, for example, you’d have to search around for two sentences here and three sentences there, but if you did so, you’d get a very good understanding of what Kant was all about.

The one thread that tied the myriad endeavors of the Enlightenment together was a striving for an improvement in the happiness of the human race, whether it be through technology, philosophy, politics, law, or some other means. That may seem like an obvious and simplistic answer. Hasn’t mankind always striven for happiness? Well, no, not really. For much of the past two thousand years the prevailing view (at least in the Western world) was that life is an ordeal to be endured so that one could be rewarded with happiness in the afterlife. The Enlightenment is often thought of as a period of extreme secularization and rising atheism, and there definitely was some turning away from prior superstitions and religious dogma, but Robertson asserts that the religious landscape of the Enlightenment was far more complex and heterogenous than widely assumed. The trend of the age was not necessarily antireligious but rather an effort to reconcile religion with reason, to question religion and theology in order to clarify them, so that religion is the product of active thought rather than passive acceptance.

Robertson’s study is not only through but also well-balanced. This isn’t just a book about how great certain Enlightenment thinkers were and what important political and scientific advances were made. Robertson also pays attention to the prejudices, superstitions, and ignorances active during this period. He presents the progress of Enlightenment thought as a series of debates, or exercises in trial and error, and gives as much consideration to those in the wrong as those in the right.

I takes a very skilled writer and researcher to encapsulate an era in one volume like this. Robertson’s book is comprehensive enough to serve as a textbook for an undergraduate course, but it doesn’t read like a textbook. The prose is accessible to general readers, and history buffs will find much food for fascination here. Robertson’s breadth of knowledge is impressive. He seems to have read just about everything published between the two dates in the subtitle, as well as the scholarly literature of recent years. For anyone interested in this period, the notes and bibliography are a treasure trove of further readings. Though I thought I had a good idea of what the Enlightenment was all about, Robertson really broadened my understanding and heightened my interest in this pivotal age in history.

Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery by Jules Verne

Robinson Crusoe fantasy camp

Not too long ago, in reviewing The Swiss Family Robinson by John David Wyss, I briefly touched upon the profound influence that Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe has had on world literature. That novel clearly had an affect on Jules Verne, who wrote at least a handful of “robinsonades” and included Crusoe-like plot elements in many of his novels of travel and exploration. Verne’s adventure novel L’école des Robinsons was published in 1882. The French title literally translates into The School for Robinsons, and the book has been published in English as School for Crusoes and An American Robinson Crusoe. The 1883 London translation of the novel, however, was entitled Godfrey Morgan, after its protagonist.

Godfrey, an orphan, was raised by his uncle, the billionaire William W. Kolderup of San Francisco. Kolderup also has an adopted daughter, Phina, with whom Godfrey is conveniently betrothed. (Almost every Verne novel features a pair of young lovers engaged to be married.) Before he ties the knot, however, young Godfrey wants to travel the world. Having never ventured far outside of the gilded cage in which he was brought up, Godfrey now has a spell of wanderlust. His future father-in-law grants Godfrey his consent to embark on a round-the-world voyage, provided he is chaperoned by his tutor, Prof. Artelett, a dandy who teaches dancing and deportment. The two head west across the Pacific Ocean towards New Zealand but never make it there. Their ship is wrecked in a storm, and the crew is lost. The two gentlemen from San Francisco find themselves marooned alone on a deserted island.

Much like the original Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, these two castaways enjoy a number of fortunate boons. All of the livestock from their ship miraculously makes it to shore, a box washes up on the beach containing many implements necessary for survival, and a hollow sequoia presents itself as a makeshift townhouse. This is not the most arduous of survival stories. Godfrey and Artelett spend most of their time gathering roots and occasionally shooting a deer. These fellows are far less industrious than the Swiss Family. In order to add some excitement to the proceedings, Verne brings in perils that belong on an entirely different continent. Eventually all is explained, though the explanation is ridiculous.

Though Verne is famous for his science fiction, little science is employed in the survival of these two gentlemen. Typical of Verne, however, this novel is largely a secular, rationalist take on the Crusoe genre. Although obligatory mention is made of the almighty every now and then, this wilderness sojourn is not a meditation on divinity like the pious contemplations of Crusoe and the Swiss. Unfortunately, there are a couple racist comments about dark-skinned islanders here. In general, I’ve found Verne to be more enlightened than many of his contemporaries, but he was still guilty of the ignorance and prejudices of his era.

There isn’t much mystery to this “Californian Mystery.” Verne sets up the plot so that every event is telegraphed well ahead of time. You’d have to be ten years old or less not to see where this story is going. Everything is so obvious that it must have been intentional by Verne to let the audience in on secrets to which Godfrey and Artelett are not privy. Does that strategy pay off? Well, so-so. This isn’t one of Verne’s more intelligent or exciting novels, but it is moderately fun, and the characters are likable. If you’ve read any of Verne beyond his two or three more famous books, then you probably know what to expect, and Godfrey Morgan neither disappoints nor exceeds those expectations.

The Misty Harbour by Georges Simenon

Maigret on the Waterfront

The Misty Harbour, published in 1932, is the 15th novel in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret mystery novels and the 30th book from that series that I have read and reviewed so far. The book’s original French title is Les port des brumes, and it has also been published in English under varying configurations of Death of a Harbor Master. The Maigret books are consistently good but not always excellent. The Misty Harbour is one of the better ones. This mystery grabs you from page one and keeps you gripped until the very end.

As the title indicates, The Misty Harbour takes place in a fog-bound seaside town: Ouistreham on the coast of Calvados, Normandy. This town serves as the seaport to the city of Caen, to which it is connected via a canal. In Paris, where Maigret serves as the superintendant of the Police Judiciaire, a John Doe is found wandering the streets. He has no memory of his identity, appears to have suffered some brain damage, and has lost the power of speech. The man has a gunshot wound to his cranium that appears to have received some medical attention. The Paris police send out newspaper articles to help ascertain the mystery man’s identity. His housekeeper responds, identifying him as Yves Joris, the harbor master at Ouistreham. She has no idea what happened to him or why he’s in Paris. Maigret accompanies Joris and the housekeeper on the train back to Ouistreham to investigate the cause of the harbor master’s injury. Shortly after arriving in the coastal town, Joris drops dead, apparently murdered by poison.

In Ouistreham, social life revolves around the waterfront tavern la Buvette de la Marine. Maigret makes several visits to the establishment to toss back a few beers with the local inhabitants and find out what they know, but nobody’s talking. The population of the town consists mostly of sailors and other working men who make their living from the sea. Many of them speak the Breton language. These men make frequent trips to England, the Netherlands, or Norway to ship goods to and from Caen. A few upper-class inhabitants, who have made their fortunes in the shipping industry, also have homes in Ouistreham. Among these is the town’s mayor, Monsieur Grandmaison, a particularly prickly character who seems to have something to hide. He repeatedly butts heads with Maigret and challenges the inspector’s authority.

Having read so many Maigret novels, I’ve gotten to the point where I can sometimes foresee where Simenon’s mystery plots are going, but this case was sufficiently perplexing that I couldn’t figure out what was going on until all is revealed in the final chapter. Atypical of Maigret novels, this one sports a few action scenes, violence included, in which Maigret gives and takes blows with the rough and tumble sailors of Ouistreham. Sailors and bargemen are frequently featured in Maigret novels. Simenon clearly has an affinity for those who live and work at sea or on the canals of France, as seen in such novels as Lock 14, The Grand Banks Café, The Flemish House, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, and Maigret and the Bum. One of the joys of reading the Maigret books is learning about different aspects of life in France, and The Misty Harbour provides a vivid glimpse into the maritime lifestyle on the Norman coast in the 1930s. In all respects, The Misty Harbour is an exceptional example of Simenon’s and Maigret’s work, one well worth reading for fans or newcomers to the series.

The Child of the Cavern, or The Underground City by Jules Verne

Home sweet coal mine

Jules Verne’s novel Les Indes noires (“The Black Indies”) was published in 1877. It has been published in English under various titles, including The Child of the Cavern, The Underground City, Strange Doings Underground, and Black Diamonds. Unfortunately, some of those English titles reveal more about the plot than they should. This is a science fiction adventure novel about a coal mine, the science in this case being geology.

James Starr was the head engineer at the Aberfoyle Mine near Edinburgh, Scotland. Ten years prior to the start of the novel, that mine was shut down, its resources deemed exhausted. As the story opens, Starr receives a letter from his right-hand man at Aberfoyle, the former overseer Simon Ford. The mysterious message begs Starr to come to Aberfoyle immediately. Although the mine has been inactive for a decade, Ford never left. He lives inside the mine with his wife and 25-year-old son Harry, in a cottage thirty stories beneath the earth. Starr descends into the mine to visit the Fords, and Simon lets him in on his recent amazing discovery. At the end of one of Aberfoyle’s underground passages, Simon has found firedamp (flammable gases) issuing forth from crevices in the rock, a strong indication that a bed of coal exists behind the walls. He speculates that the mine may have some riches left in her yet, in the form of a mother lode of undiscovered coal. Ford and his family may not be the only parties to have made this discovery, however. There is evidence that some mystery person has been wandering in the caverns of Aberfoyle, perhaps with evil intentions.

I’ve always admired the fact that Verne could make a science fiction novel out of just about any field of science. He proved that scientific romances (the 19th-century term for the genre) didn’t have to be about outer space or utopian or dystopian futures. Verne wrote novels about all sorts of scientific phenomena that struck his fancy, from aeronautics (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1873) to paleontology (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1867) to oceanography (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1871). I’ve never been fascinated with coal mines, but Verne managed to keep me interested with this subterranean adventure. In fact, he makes coal mines sound like the most wonderful places on earth. All the characters want to live and work in one, so much so that they rarely make trips to the surface. Verne’s books are also known for their geographical content and often educate the reader on exotic locales. In this novel, however, the reader doesn’t really learn a whole lot about Scotland, because so much time is spent underground.

While The Child of the Cavern is grounded in geological fact, this story gets pretty farfetched, even for Verne standards. As previously alluded to, people spend inordinate amounts of time deep underground. God only knows what they’re eating. And don’t get me started on Harfang (a secret better left unrevealed). One must suspend quite a bit of disbelief to enjoy this novel. The plot here is a little like a Scooby Doo mystery, one of the less satisfying ones where the “ghost” unmasks to reveal an unfamiliar character. As is often the case with Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, there is a sinister villain here, as well as a couple of young lovers eager to get married when the crisis is resolved. This is not one of Verne’s greater works. It’s an obscurity, and probably deserves to be so, but if you can get in touch with your inner twelve-year-old, it is a fun ride.

The Lottery Ticket by Jules Verne

Foregone conclusions in Norway

The Lottery Ticket is a novel by Jules Verne published in 1886. It was also published in English translation under the alternate title of Ticket No. 9672. Like most of Verne’s fiction, this novel is one of his Voyages Extraordinaires, a series that consists of about 60 books. Although Verne is largely remembered today as a science fiction writer, the one element that really ties all of his work together is a love of travel, geography, and exploration. The Lottery Ticket is not science fiction but rather one of Verne’s geographical adventures. To be honest, however, there really isn’t even much adventure in this one.

The Lottery Ticket is set in the Telemark region of Southern Norway. The Hansen family, consisting of the widow Dame Hansen and her young-adult children Joel and Hulda, run an inn in the village of Dal near the Rjukan Falls, a popular tourist destination. Hulda is engaged to a fisherman named Ole Kamp, who is off on a commercial fishing voyage to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. The two young lovers’ wedding is set to take place when he returns. His ship, the Viking, however, misses its expected return date by over a month. The Hansens fear the vessel is lost at sea and Hulda may never see her betrothed again.

Like many a Verne novel, this one takes forever to get going. The story doesn’t really start until chapter 11 or 12 (out of 20). Everything prior to that is just getting acquainted with the characters and the setting. Through the daily lives of the Hansen family, Verne delivers a primer on Norwegian geography, culture, and scenery. Verne traveled to Norway in 1861, and I would assume many of the towns and sites mentioned here probably comprised his itinerary during that trip. He definitely visited the Rjukan Falls. The lottery ticket mentioned in the book’s title is really a ridiculous plot element that can only lead to a predictable conclusion. The novel would have been better without it. The one real opportunity for adventure in this novel is the search for Ole’s lost ship, but all of that happens “offstage.” The main characters are not involved in that manhunt, and the details are only relayed secondhand and after the fact.

Despite being utterly predictable, The Lottery Ticket is a pleasant enough read. The characters are likable, and the setting is inviting. There is a satisfaction that comes from watching the events unfold in their obvious manner. Verne provides enough of a travelogue of Norway to maintain one’s interest. Verne was very good at writing about the scientific and geographical aspects of his fiction. He was able to get readers excited about those subjects. When he describes an exotic locale, he typically gives you enough of an education to make you want to go and visit those places. When it came to putting plots together, however, Verne’s efforts were often clumsy and formulaic, by today’s standards anyway. There are exceptions, of course, such as the excellent Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Even given his faults, I still think Verne was a better storyteller than H. G. Wells. The Lottery Ticket is certainly not one of the more extraordinary voyages in Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, but like almost all of his books, it’s a satisfactorily fun ride nonetheless.

The Flemish House by Georges Simenon

Ho-hum Maigret mystery

The Flemish House, first published in 1932, is the 14th book in Georges Simenon’s series of Inspector Maigret detective novels. Though the most recent paperback edition from Penguin Books is called The Flemish House, all previous editions were titled The Flemish Shop. The original French title is Chez les Flamands.

Maigret is invited to look into a case in Givet, a town on the border between France and Belgium, along the Meuse River. A friend of a friend, Anna Peeters, asks Maigret to help clear her family name. A young woman named Germaine Piedboeuf has gone missing. It is known that she has an illegitimate child by Anna’s brother Joseph, who is engaged to marry another woman. The locals feel that the Peeters family killed Germaine to get rid of her and any claims she may have on Joseph. Anna Peeters argues that there is no hard evidence connecting her family to the woman’s disappearance. They are merely the victims of prejudice based on nationality and class.

In this border town, animosity and resentment exist between the French and Flemish residents, which, here on the French side of the border, amplifies the locals’ dislike of the Peeters family. The Peeterses run a successful grocery store/bar serving mostly Flemish customers, and as a result they are relatively well-to-do, financially. The Piedboeufs, on the other hand, are a family of working-class factory employees, so Joseph Peeters’s seduction of Germaine leaves a bad taste of the rich man exploiting the poor girl. All this fuel added to the fire contributes to Anna Peeters turning to Maigret for help in clearing this matter up.

Beyond the mystery, these Maigret novels are often enjoyable for what Simenon shows us of French life of the time period in question. The River Meuse is a thoroughfare for barge traffic, and Givet one of its more popular stops, so Simenon once again gives some glimpses into the lives of the bargemen and families who ply this trade. Canal life is also covered in Lock 14, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, and Maigret and the Bum. In The Flemish House, the Meuse is “in spate,” with high flooding and strong currents that have halted any boat traffic and left the barges stranded along the riverbanks. The depiction of Givet is similar to that of other provincial towns in Maigret novels (The Grand Banks Café, for example). The majority of the residents are shown as close-minded conspiracy theorists. The Belgian border adds a touch of uniqueness to this novel, as the reader gets an inkling of insight into Flemish culture through the daily lives of the Peeters family in their home and shop.

Upon finishing the book, I really have no idea how Maigret solved this case. He just kind of hangs out with the suspects until he gets a feel for them. There’s no case-cracking clue that tips the scales in his favor. The reader can make an educated guess as to who may have committed the crime, and in the end it seems like that’s just what Maigret does. The solution is neither obvious nor surprising. When the perpetrator is revealed, the reader just feels apathy. Habitual readers of Maigret novels know that the inspector always solves his case, but he doesn’t always subject the culprits to the full extent of legal justice. Sometimes he makes a moral judgment that the crime was justified or committed under extenuating circumstances, and he cuts the criminal a break. In this case, however, it is difficult to understand why Maigret would exercise leniency to the extent that he does. The Flemish House failed to capture my attention the way most Maigret mysteries do. This is just an average mystery novel, and a below-average book for Simenon.

The Shadow Puppet by Georges Simenon

Only murder in the building

First published in 1912, The Shadow Puppet is the twelfth novel in Belgian author Georges Simenon’s series of mystery novels starring Parisian police detective Jules Maigret. The original French title of this novel is L’Ombre chinoise, meaning literally “the Chinese shadow,” which refers to a certain type of shadow puppet. This novel has also been published in English under the titles of Maigret Mystified and The Shadow in the Courtyard, the latter title being the most accurate. If this were a Hardy Boys mystery, the story would actually involve a shadow puppet, but here the title is strictly metaphorical, referring to a human silhouette viewed through a window shade.

A concierge at an apartment building on the Place des Vosges calls the police to report a murder, and Maigret reports to the scene of the crime. Passing through an arched entryway, he enters the large courtyard of this apartment complex. On one side of this courtyard resides the laboratory of a serum manufacturer (medical elixirs, I presume). The owner of the company, Monsieur Couchet, has been found seated at his desk, shot to death, and his safe emptied of its contents, estimated to be 360,000 francs. Couchet, a very wealthy man, doesn’t actually reside in this building, but through an unfortunate coincidence, his ex-wife does. Both have remarried since their divorce. Couchet also had a mistress, not much of a secret, for whom Maigret develops a sympathy. Although on the surface this crime appears to be a typical armed robbery killing, Maigret comes to suspect that the murder may have been committed by one of the building’s residents. As he delves into the case, he uncovers the secret lives of these tenants and their tangled web of relationships.

The fact that an industrial pharmaceutical laboratory would exist on the ground floor of an apartment building is one of those little historical details that makes Maigret novels interesting. From reading these mysteries, you learn a lot about what life was like in Paris, and France at large, in the early twentieth century. The reader gets to see aspects of Parisian life they’d never find in a tourism brochure. One facet of French society that Simenon often addresses in these novels is class consciousness and social status. In The Shadow Puppet, differences in financial status—between the rich Couchets in their mansion on Boulevard Haussmann, the middle-class tenants of the apartment block at the Place des Vosges, and the hard-up mistress and her peers living in Montmarte—play an important part in the story. As usual, Simenon goes beyond mere stereotypes and caricatures to create complex characters with realistic psychological motives.

I became very involved with the lives of these characters; that aspect of the novel is expertly done. The mystery story itself, however, is not one of the most artfully constructed puzzles in Maigret’s casebook. To set up this unusual web of relationships between the characters, Simenon had to rely on maybe one too many coincidences. It is a little hard to believe that some of these people just happened to end up as next-door neighbors to each other. This murder also suffers from a shortage of viable suspects, leading to a conclusion that’s not unforeseen, though there are some creative revelations in the details of the crime. As always, this Maigret novel is a compelling read, thoroughly entertaining, but would it make a top-ten list of Maigret books? Probably not.