THE LITTLE SAINT

by Georges Simenon ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The established audience for Simenon's psychological thrillers will be surprised and, we think, pleased. According to the publishers, this is the book he always wanted to write and the theme he has chosen has enjoyed a certain vogue among American writers -- the development of genius out of squalor. (See Kelley, A Drop of Patience, p. 130, and Dornfeld, Boy Gravely. P. 495). Simenon brings a surer eye for convincing detail and his own genius as a storyteller to Louis Cuchas, undersized, underprivileged, undereducated and even undersexed from early childhood, who nevertheless became a painter of recognized stature in his own lifetime. Simenon's portrait of genius parallels the classic definition -- the genius as sport, basically simple, narrowly focussed, self sufficient, and capable of complete absorption. His Louis Cuchas grows up in a slum made more real by Simenon's refusal to treat the street. He keeps attention trained on the apartment, two big rooms, one a bedroom divided by a curtain, with six children on one side and an earth goddess of a mother disporting herself with noisy abandon and a series of lovers on the other. Louis is neither as affected nor as driven by circumstances as his siblings, contented, in the frowsty warmth of the place, to watch the play of light and shadow on the walls and in the street. Louis grown up aspired to nothing more nor less than to capture on canvas the living, moving quality of light with the half-derisive, half-affectionate nickname of the title and Simenon makes you believe it and care. No small achievement. Big sales?

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1965

Categories: FICTION