In addition to his detective novels featuring the chief inspector Maigret and other works, Georges Simenon wrote 117 “romans durs”, literally “hard” but described in English as “psychological novels”. One of the best known of these, published towards the end of his writing career, is “Le Chat” or “The Cat”, so popular that it was made into a film in 1971.

“Le Chat” was apparently inspired by a visit to his mother in the 1950s, where Simenon was struck by how she and her partner did not speak to one another, but seemed to express a mutual hatred via the cruelty they inflicted on each other’s pet animals.

From this bizarre situation sprang the tale of two lonely, recently bereaved people in their sixties who happen to live in the same Parisian cul-de-sac and make the mistake of getting married, only to find that their differences in class, taste and habits make them completely incompatible and provoke a profound conflict. The husband Émile Bouin is painted in a more sympathetic light – he’s a simple working man, goodhearted if a bit vulgar, who likes to drink a glass or two in a café and smoke his “nauséabonds” cigars. By contrast, Marguerite is a dainty “petite bourgeoise”, daughter of the founder of a biscuit factory, eventually ruined through a partner’s financial mismanagement. Frail in appearance but with a will of iron, she is portrayed as self-centred, vindictive and superficial.

She detests her husband’s pet Joseph, an independent alley cat who seems to menace her beloved parrot. Despite being deeply religious, she is suspected by Émile of having murdered his cat. This is the beginning of a long-term feud which the pair conduct into their early seventies, communicating solely via written messages. So Émile’s “Attention au beurre” is loaded with meaning – implying malignly that the butter may be poisoned just as Marguerite did away with Joseph. Needless to say, the parrot has come to grief as well, but has been restored to its cage in stuffed form, to trouble Émile‘s conscience.

The monotonous, oppressive life the pair lead is revealed from the outset, and would soon become intolerable even to the reader, but for the continual touches of dark humour. Simenon also captures the nostalgia and melancholy of a former Paris in the 1960s when inner city neighbourhoods of close-knit communities in which people know each other’s business, or think they do, are being disrupted by redevelopment schemes. Even the couple’s cul-de-sac is being demolished by the bulldozer.

Deftly constructed with flashbacks and digressions, Simenon skilfully reveals past events which have shaped the characters, their motivations and emotions, against the atmospheric backdrop of open air cafes and bars, dance halls on the banks of the Seine, or meetings in the Parc Montsouris. Simenon’s clarity of expression and insight hook the reader despite the essential sadness of the theme as it draws to its ironic conclusion.

Simenon embarked on his “romans durs” with the intention of winning The Nobel Prize for Literature, but never achieved this ambition, causing him to change his career from “novelist” to “no profession” in his passport, in a surge of disillusion. The more French novels I read, the more I think he deserved such a prize.