Stephanie Jane recenzis The Venice Train de Georges Simenon
Superb character study
5 steloj
While I am not particularly a fan of the Maigret novels, I do love Georges Simenon's character study works and, for me, The Venice Train has to be one of his best. Justin Calmar firmly believes himself to be a man of integrity, albeit one who has allowed his life's trajectory to be dictated by other people's expectations for him. As the result of a chance meeting on a long distance train, however, Justin finds himself questioning how much of what he does day to day is actually what he wants to do and how genuine his self belief really is.
Justin is an unusual character in that, while his actions lead and completely determine the course of this novel, he spends practically every waking minute questioning himself and second-guessing what he should do. He becomes the ultimate overthinker which meant that I could strongly empathise with his predicament! In …
While I am not particularly a fan of the Maigret novels, I do love Georges Simenon's character study works and, for me, The Venice Train has to be one of his best. Justin Calmar firmly believes himself to be a man of integrity, albeit one who has allowed his life's trajectory to be dictated by other people's expectations for him. As the result of a chance meeting on a long distance train, however, Justin finds himself questioning how much of what he does day to day is actually what he wants to do and how genuine his self belief really is.
Justin is an unusual character in that, while his actions lead and completely determine the course of this novel, he spends practically every waking minute questioning himself and second-guessing what he should do. He becomes the ultimate overthinker which meant that I could strongly empathise with his predicament! In the space of a hundred and seventy or so pages, this outwardly happy but discontented family man descends into a deep paranoia, basically caused by his fear of not being believed if he comes clean about a moment's panic in a Lausanne apartment block.
The Venice Train is an incredibly introverted novel. We spend most of the time navigating Justin's thought processes and only sporadically stepping aside to see that the impervious front he thought he had created is transparent to pretty much everyone who knows him. This makes for an utterly compelling read in a disconcerting 'watching an imminent car crash' way. I was confident quite early on that things would not ultimately turn out well for Justin, but Simenon takes his man in a very different direction to the one I had imagined. I loved the tense details and seemingly inconsequential minutiae, all of which build to a shockingly abrupt climax. The Venice Train is perfectly paced and a masterclass in prose portraiture.