The legendary and extraordinarily prolific Belgian novelist Georges Simenon is profiled in a detailed but surprisingly dry biography. Simenon, creator of the unforgettable Inspector Maigret mysteries, published over 400 books in his lifetime. Almost a decade after his death, his detective and psychological crime novels remain both popular and influential. Assouline, editor of the French magazine Lire, patiently chronicles the evolution of Simenon's style and sifts fact from fiction in the novelist's own memoirs. He examines Simenon's egocentric behavior and compulsive womanizing (he bragged of bedding ten thousand woman) with a noncensorious Gallic shrug. Assouline is at his best when uncovering suppressed areas of Simenon's life, such as his early anti-Semitic writings and his wartime near-collaboration. But for the most part the writer fails to come to life in this narrative, in which mountains of facts take the place of revealing anecdotes. Simenon took his business dealings as seriously as his writing, and Assouline follows suit by presenting his every contract negotiation in tedious detail. Rather than discussing Simenon's art while documenting his life, he saves his discussion of Simenon's body of work for one chapter awkwardly placed near the book's end. In addition, Assouline finds the key to understanding Simenon's character in his relationship with his daughter Marie-Jo, whose obsessive love for her father ultimately led to her suicide. But he hides this information until the last chapter of the book, when he springs it on the reader, acting rather like Maigret revealing some villainy. But playing detective novel tricks with a real family's tragedy comes across as coy at best, exploitative at worst. Assouline's biography fails to be what Simenon's novels almost always were: concise, perceptive, and readable. (16 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 18, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-40285-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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