mercoledì 30 dicembre 2020

SIMENON SIMENON "REPORT" - CHRISTMAS ALONE IS BETTER THAN CHRISTMAS WITH A CREEP


Electric Lit - 23/12/2020 - Jessica Harrison (Editorial Director of Penguin Classics UK) ... Belgian writer George Simenon [...] famous as the creator of Inspector Maigret, the pipe-smoking scourge of the Parisian underworld, Simenon made his idiosyncratic contribution to the festive category with his collection Un Noël de Maigret in 1951. “The Little Restaurant near Place des Ternes” is a crisp take on the Christmas story, which initially appears to reject the time-honoured traditions of the genre. In Simenon’s gloomy Paris, a “fine rain,” not snow, is falling; his heroine, Long Tall Jeanne, is no angel; and death, not Santa Claus, makes an appearance one Christmas Eve at the quiet restaurant in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Instead of a Christmas tale, we seem to have stepped into a classic crime narrative: there’s a mysterious death, a bad-tempered detective inspector, and witnesses who may have secrets of their own. But as the story unfolds, Simenon reveals his true hand as he depicts, against the backdrop of a seedy and predatory city, an act of pure and redemptive generosity. The spirit of Christmas rises again; here is a true Christmas story after all...>>>

1 commento:

LASCIATE QUI I VOSTRI COMMENTI, LE VOSTRE IMPRESSIONI LE PRECISAZIONI ANCHE LE CRITICHE E I VOSTRI CONTRIBUTI.