Translated into English

“Les Innocents” by Georges Simenon: “to undestand, but not judge”

Numbers differ according to which source one reads, but “Les Innocents” was the last of the 117 “romans durs” which Georges Simenon wrote in addition to the 75 books and 28 short stories featuring Inspector Maigret. In these “hard novels”, Simenon wished to create stand-alone stories with psychological depth, entering the minds of his main characters, exploring what factors had shaped them, how they behaved in extreme situations, how they reflected on their lives in terms of success, failure, and the point of it all. Although his “romans durs” were admired by writers like Gide or Mauriac, other critics questioned the quality of novels produced at such speed and frequency.

In “Les Innocents”, based in Paris, Georges Célerin is a successful jeweller, a skilled goldsmith with a flair for design, who at times can hardly believe the intense happiness of twenty years of marriage to Annette. Dedicated to his work, he accepts her insistence on continuing her social work, caring for the aged poor, because she wishes to maintain her independence. Their two teenage children give no cause for concern, and the burden of domestic tasks is shouldered by their former live-in nanny, now housekeeper, Nathalie. This idyllic life is shattered when a policeman appears in his workshop, with news that Annette has been killed – running across the road, she slipped and was crushed by a lorry.

Grief-striken, Célerin is forced to reflect on his marriage. Gradually, he comes to realise that he did not know his wife, but it is clear that he loved her far more than vice versa, while in his obsessive focus on his wife, he did not pay his children sufficient attention. In short, this is an example of the lack of communication between a man and a woman, which was so often a theme of Simenon’s work. How will Célerin react when by chance he is driven to find out for himself what on earth she was doing in the locality where she met her death, and so confront the truth?

Simenon was a gifted storyteller, weaving insights and a strong sense of place into the often banal events of ordinary lives. He is good at building up tension, and if he sometimes disappoints one by diffusing it, this may prove plausible, as in real life. Perhaps assisted by his early employment as a journalist, including as a crime reporter, he made a conscious effort to write in a clear, concise style to engage the reader. This is most evident if read in French, by comparison with the flowery phrases often found in this language. My only criticism is that in dialogues it can be hard to be sure who is talking.

The most fascinating aspect in all this is Simenon’s own personal life, so much more complex and intriguing than, for instance, this plot. In reality, he had not only affairs, but a chain of much younger mistresses, living with him and his wife for long periods (not to mention bearing his children), or holidaying with him and each other at the same time. In his novels, he clearly took particular situations from his own life and developed them. His stated aim was to understand without judging, but it is hard either to understand or fail to judge the convoluted transgressions of his life.

Germinal by Zola: a marathon read worth running

When Zola died in 1902, crowds of workers hailed his funeral cortège with cries of « Germinal », the best-selling novel which is probably his most famous work. This was based on the meticulous research conducted in 1884 when, formally dressed in frock coat, high collar and top hat, pen and notebook in hand, he descended into a coalmine belonging to the Anzin company in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, in order to assess the working conditions which led to a prolonged and unsuccessful strike.

A journalist before achieving sufficient success to support himself as an author, Zola had known great poverty as a child, after his father’s premature death, and as an unemployed young man who had twice failed his baccalauréat. Perhaps the experience of inequality triggered his strong social conscience. This was combined with a firm conviction that people’s lives are determined by a mixture of heredity and their environment. We see this in the principal character in Germinal, Étienne, the idealistic but naive newcomer who is carried away by his inherited impulsive, addictive personality to become the leader of a doomed strike. While conveying vividly the hardship and injustice suffered by the mining families, Zola continually shows how they have been brutalised by this: casually promiscuous, quick to take advantage of each other and capable of cruel acts of vengeance.

The novel opens with a dramatic description of the mine at night as first seen by Étienne. Zola portrays it as a kind of monster, literally swallowing up the miners as they descend for their shift. The descriptions of the working conditions are truly appalling : long, dangerous trudges and climbs deep underground to the coal seams, drenched with water as they hew the coal, risk of fire damp explosions, unfair pay cuts when they fail to meet impossible targets to both install the pit props to protect themselves and bring enough truckloads of coal to the pithead. The food is so scanty and poor, the exhaustion so intense, the patronising support available so inadequate and unreliable, hardships and misfortunes for some pile up to such a weight that one wonders how the mining community can survive at all. The comparisons with the pampered lives of the families of the mines shareholders and senior staff are shocking.

There is a powerful metaphor in the huge percheron, the draught horse brought down as a foal to drag containers filled with coal along tunnels to the pithead, which becomes blind through lack of light, can only dream of the sunlight, and eventually dies underground, to be buried there.

Events often seem exaggerated or far-fetched, and many characters, particularly the wealthy, highly stereotyped. The frequent detailed descriptions filled with technical terms for the mining operations are hard to follow, especially in the original French if not one’s first language. So reading all five hundred and forty odd pages of it (or even more in some editions) requires a marathon effort. One can grow inured to so much intense suffering, and the touches of ironic humour cannot compensate for this.

Produced originally in instalments for a magazine over a period of about four months, now the novel seems too long, at times repetitive, and in need of a firm edit, reflecting the lack of alternative media at the time to distract people from reading it. Yet, it is the kind of classic novel which lingers in the mind, provoking thought. If possible, it is best to read the novel in its original langage to experience the full impact.

The novel ends on the optimistic note, that the miners, forced back to work but their spirits unbroken, will, like seeds, produce future generations who are able to rise up and claim their rights – a belief , yet to be realised, which has inspired the causes of socialism and reform. Hence the title, for Germinal was the seventh month of the French Revolution’s revised calendar, intended to evoke the idea of seeds of equality growing in fertile ground.

Le Serpent majuscule (The Grand Serpent) by Pierre Lemaître – Should fictional cruelty be kept within certain limits? Discuss!

Pierre Lemaître became an internationally bestselling author on the basis of his ingenious if far-fetched, macabre, “romans noirs” crime fiction. So his switch to historical novels via “Au revoir là-haut” (The Great Swindle) did not please all his fans. The decision to publish in 2021 Le Serpent majuscule (The Great Serpent), his first novel, written in the nineteen eighties, is apparently an attempt to make amends.

With only minimal editing, this “rings true” for its period. It’s a world without mobile phones, social networks, surveillance cameras, centralised computer records and advanced use of DNA: in short all the sophisticated technology now available to trap a serial killer.

The interest in psychology which runs through Lemaître’s work is already evident in this first novel, focused on the two main characters, Mathilde and Henri. These are psychopaths who applied their skills to a noble cause in the French Resistance, but whose ruthlessness in peacetime is channelled into contract killing for financial gain. For some, the suspense lies in whether and how Mathilde, with her alternating periods of mental astuteness and signs of dementia which make her an increasing liability for Henri to employ, will emerge triumphantly, escaping her just deserts.

Promoters of the book have no trouble in culling phrases from reviewers, like Le Figaro’s, “Délicieusement immoral”, but as his “Avant-propos” or foreword shows, Lemaître is keenly aware of many readers’ reservations over his casual erasure of characters to whom they have become attached, and he seems perhaps surprisingly anxious to defend himself. I take his point that misfortune and bad luck are “what happens in life”, so why fight shy of including them in a novel? He also argues that since it’s predictable that crime novels will contain bloodshed, perhaps sensitive readers should simply avoid them.

Overall, Le Serpent majuscule repelled me with the sheer degree of its clinically described gratuitous violence, wreaked not only on fellow-villains but also on the few decent and potentially interesting characters. The dispatch of individuals by shooting or bludgeoning, be it for unexplained reasons, in error, or as “collateral damage” in the course of pursuing another target, became tedious. Mathilde’s confused and contradictory thoughts became repetitive. Between the bursts of brutality, the narrative drive often seems plodding.

Apart from the obligations of a French book group deadline, what kept me going was the chance to learn some more of the idioms and ”argot” with which this novel is peppered in the French version.

I may persist with the historical trilogy, “Les enfants du désastre” which starts with “Au revoir là-haut” set in the First World War and its aftermath in France. This would seem a less unedifying use of one’s time, also displaying better Lemaître’s development as a writer.

Je l’aimais or Someone I loved by Anna Gavalda

A mother of two little girls, Chloé is devastated by her husband Adrien’s abrupt announcement that he is leaving her – taking a flight to be with a mistress of whose existence Chloé has been totally unaware.

Surprisingly, Chloé seeks the support of Adrien’s parents, despite the fact that her father-in-law Pierre seems unlikely to be sympathetic – an undemonstrative man whom Adrien and his sister Christine have always criticised for his harsh, uncaring treatment of them as children. It therefore appears odd that Peter should insist on driving Chloé to the family’s holiday home where she may feel calmer. I suspected that this would be the cue for an imprudent romance between the unlikely pair. Far from this, Pierre uses their seclusion as an opportunity to unburden himself to Chloé. He confesses to a passionate longstanding affair which he had to give up years earlier out of a sense of obligation to his wife, who refused to divorce him since it would have meant a loss of material benefits and status. His message to Chloé is that, in abandoning her, Adrien is not only displaying a courage which his father lacked, but also giving her the freedom to embark on a new life.

It seems that the author had experienced a recent divorce, so that perhaps the writing of the novel was cathartic. However, Pierre’s argument seems both overly simplistic and highly debatable.

This debut novel by Anna Gavalda which has proved the first in a string of bestsellers, is distinctive in being written in a play-like format, almost totally dialogue, with no real plot and little context. The downside of this is that, too often, one has to stop and check who is speaking. Otherwise, it’s a relatively easy read for someone learning French. However, the lack of context and action reduces one’s ability to engage with any of the characters.

Situations are gradually revealed or implied through the dialogue, until roughly halfway through, Pierre becomes the main character, indulging in a monologue of “telling” which becomes tedious in its repetition. Meanwhile, Chloé’s plight recedes into the background and is left unresolved.

Initially, Chloé’s emotions are portrayed realistically, together with her relations with her children. Pierre seems a less convincing character. Many of the situations described seem somewhat clichéd.

Made into a film in 2009, this tale may have found a more effective format, but the novel lacks depth and one does not feel much sympathy for any of the characters when it reaches its limp conclusion.

“The Stolen Heart” – The Kyiv Mysteries by Andrey Kurkov: “Why the heart is not meat”

The Stolen Heart” is the second novel in “The Kiev Mysteries” series, set in 1919 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Samson Kolechko is a young detective, tasked with his older colleague, renegade priest Kholodny, to gather evidence of a normal activity which it appears has suddenly been declared a crime: “the illicit slaughter of livestock and violation of the decree of the ExProfFooCom banning private trade in meat.” It seems that Kurkov, with his preference for black humour and farce as a way of debunking authoritarian regimes could not resist using an actual example from the period.

As is often the case with crime novels, the questioning of those who have bought meat from the agent Briskin, held on remand, grows repetitively tedious, yet perhaps this serves to add to the flavour of senseless times, with Kiev increasingly under the control of the Red Army, and sinister Soviet secret police organisation, the “Cheka”, dedicated to combating “counter-revolution and speculation”.

One of the strengths of “The Silver Bone”, which contributed to its longlisting for the International Booker Prize, was its portrayal of life in an atmospheric old city which has been suddenly overturned by uncertainty, arbitrary violence and acute shortages of substances as basic as salt. A scene in “The Stolen Heart” portrays an enraged cabby whose vehicle has just been rammed by a village cart, abruptly withdrawing his complaint in return for a few pounds of the cart’s load of salt. However, by this stage, the reader has “got the picture” and wants something more.

Although “The Stolen Heart” has received some good reviews, I was left with three main reservations. One is the heightened surreal aspect which first appeared in the previous novel: Samson’s severed ear, which mysteriously shows no signs of decay, is kept in a Monpensier (luxury sweets) box which can be hidden in convenient places for eavesdropping on useful conversations audible to Samson despite being some distance away.

Secondly, there are too many incidents which remain unresolved, and it was only on reaching the last page, to “The end. But to be continued”, that I realised that each book in the series is like a long episode, rather than a freestanding tale in its own right. The result of this is that the “denouement” tends to be underwhelming, and aspects remain irritatingly unclear if one has forgotten some detail in the previous novel.

I also found many of the dialogues quite unconvincing, and the descriptions overloaded with banal minor details – while the major ones too often remain obscure, and written in a distracting style which reads like a too literal translation – yet the translator has won prizes for his work, also writes reviews, his own fiction and teaches in university English departments. So perhaps he is retaining the style of the original Russian. The effect of the frequent odd or ill-chosen turns of phrase is that one does not engage so strongly with the characters. But is it meant to be a kind of Eastern European “absurdist” style intended to be part and parcel of the satire?

Just occasionally, there are moments which ring true, generally involving Samson, as when he reflects at a very inopportune moment,

“Could it be said then, that Samson loved Nadezhda in German? Reliably, calmly?

Samson considered this. The idea of loving in German did not appeal to him. The world war that had ended the previous year gave it a cruel, bloody connotation.

No, he decided. He loved Natasha respectfully rather than calmly. While she loved him pityingly”.

Is it a printing error that the map of Samson’s Kyiv, 1919, bears not a single place name apart from the River Dnipro? I would like to have been able to locate the streets and squares named so precisely – perhaps they were too long to fit legibly on the page.

Kurkov’s success as a writer appears to have been enhanced by his courage, albeit through the medium of satire, in exposing the corruption of post-Soviet Ukraine in the 1990s. My admiration for his debut novel, “Death and the Penguin”, inspired me to embark on the current series. I plan to try “Grey Bees”, the tale of a beekeeper living in Ukraine’s Grey Zone between rival forces in the current conflict.

But I don’t think I shall return to find how life works out for Samson and Nadezdha, although their names suggest that it will be well.

“The Silver Bone”, (The Kiev Mysteries 1) by Andrey Kurkov –

Set in the Kiev of 1919, this historical crime fiction provides a striking portrayal of life in the Ukrainian People’s Republic, newly formed in the wake of the Great War and the Russian Revolution, its independence undermined by a confusing succession of competing Bolsheviks, White Russians, and Hetman-led Cossacks. Perhaps this enables us to identify even more with the perpetual state of uncertainty and disarray which the citizens of Kiev have to endure now.

In the dramatic opening pages, former student Samson Kolechko’s right ear is severed by a passing Cossack’s sabre, which also leaves his father lying dead in the street.  On returning to the scene, Samson finds that his father’s shoes have been stolen, but his wallet remains, stuffed with banknotes, although some are useless, having been replaced recently by yet another new regime’s currency .

When his flat is requisitioned by a couple of corrupt Soviet soldiers, who use it to store stolen goods, Kolechno fears for this life. By a rare stroke of luck, his ability to write coherent reports gains him employment as a detective at the local police station. Intrigued by a curious silver bone among the stolen items, he embarks on a dangerous investigation.

The first in what promises to be a series of “The Kiev Mysteries”, this novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and has been widely praised. Andrey Kurkov was already well-known for his writing, including “Death of a Penguin”, a satire on the political situation in the Ukraine of the 1990s.

Translated from the Russian, the style is sometimes stilted, but this may enhance the sense of a past age. Based on a good deal of research of the period, including a street map of the main locations, “The Silver Bone” relies on black humour and a touch of surrealism, which some may find unnecessary and irritating, to keep us engaged in a world of arbitrary decisions. People survive by keeping their heads down in a world of sudden violence and niggling deprivation. They’re are beaten if they resist attempts to commandeer all but their most basic items of furniture; they are ordered to remove snow drifts in the streets, without being given the necessary equipment. Power cuts are frequent, goods and services are best paid for using some item in short supply, even as basic as salt, if one can get hold of it.

Unfortunately, apart from a few dramatic moments, and an ironic twist at the end which paves the way for a sequel, the solving “mystery” proves a disappointment- convoluted and unconvincing, weighed down with some unduly long or tedious descriptions. Left with a sense that the denouement doesn’t quite “add up”, one cannot muster the energy to trawl back through the text to work out why.

Apart from Samson, the characters are mainly two-dimensional, with a few exceptions like Kholodny who has abandoned the priesthood to become a policeman. When asked by Samson what people will believe in when they forget god, he meditates, “In themselves, in the future, in the power of nature”, sadly a case of overoptimism.

There are parallels between this and the earlier “Death and the Penguin” but the latter is more subtle and original in its quirkiness, contriving to escape censorship in corrupt regime.

Impact by Olivier Norek: jury out on un thriller écolo

A bestselling French author of crime fiction, Olivier Norek was also a scriptwriter for the addictive television series “Engrenages” or “Spiral” in English. In “Impact”, he has chosen to use a thriller as a vehicle for confronting us with the extreme consequences of climatic change, particularly in parts of the world little known to those most responsible for aggravating the problem. His serious purpose, perhaps fed by years spent as an aid worker, is indicated by the references supplied at the end to support every adverse effect described.

His opening chapter sets the tone with a graphic description of the Niger delta, where leaking oil pipes have polluted the land, forcing the evacuation of the local population to a coastal “bidonville” shanty town. The bodies of the many who have already died are burned, presumably to prevent a greater pollution at the price of a lesser one, not to mention the lack of humanity involved. Subsequent digressions transport us to a range of far-flung places under pressure, like northern Siberia, where hungry polar bears forced southwards by the melting of ice caps terrorise the residents.


Already shaken by his experiences in Nigeria, soldier Virgil Solal is devastated by the loss of his infant daughter, only a few moments after her birth. Doctors assure him that despite living in the attractive district of Bercy Village, the foetus must have been fatally damaged by the effects of air pollution from the nearby ring road and cement works. This is the trigger for Solal to assume the role of an ecowarrior, heading up a direct action group, “Greenwar”.


This novel may well stir the emotions, prick the conscience and alter the mindset of readers. It may also prompt discussions which the writer did not intend.

The wildfires raging through the Hollywood Hills as I write, leaving a landscape reminiscent of Gaza, may prove to some that the scale of potential global catastrophe cannot be exaggerated. However, such scenes as the Indian family taking refuge on their kitchen work tops not just from the rising water but the snapping jaws of the crocodile lurking in it appear too far-fetched. Likewise, the rapid rise of a global cult, supporting Solal with his assistants dressed in panda suits with distinctive mock red facial scars seem improbable. We are assured of the effort to minimise the impact on the environment of printing this novel, but what about that of the mass production of the panda suits?

Solal’s murder of a kidnapped oil executive whose company predictably refuses to pay a vast ransom with major concessions is justified by him and legal defence as being nothing compared with the deaths due to climate change caused by fossil fuels. The suggestion that Solal’s actions will be sufficient to arouse mass movements to force change is unconvincing. The issues are oversimplified by the failure to present and adequately demolish where possible the counterarguments. Do the ends justify the means? Are the ends actually achieved sufficient? What about the complicating effects of overpopulation, or the understandable wish of less developed countries to “catch up”?

Do the somewhat two-dimensional, stereotyped characters, neatly divided into “good” and “bad” detract from the novel, together with the excessive contrast between moments of gimmicky horror and sentimentality?

It was good practice to read this in the original French, and although by turns irritating, disjointed and a little tedious in its repetition of calamities, Impact is thought-provoking. However, I would prefer to have read a John Pilger-style set of articles exposing the untrammelled capitalism, short-term approach, greed and lack of vision and strategy, to name only a few of the complex factors driving climate change.

“Tropique de la Violence” (Tropic of Violence) by Nathacha Appanah – hell in a corner of paradise.

This is a searing portrayal of Mayotte, the small island off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, a far-flung remnant of the French colonies, sharing the status of “Department” in name alone with those in mainland France. This is a land of brutal contrasts: a little corner of paradise for tourists with its white sandy beaches and lush scents of flowering hibiscus and frangipani on one hand, on the other the hell of the shanty towns like Kaweni, nicknamed Gaza with tragic prescience. Here gangs of youths roam and steal, high on drugs, while the population is swollen  by the “clandestins”, immigrants “sans papiers” who  mistakenly see Mayotte as an easy backdoor route into France.

Moïse  symbolises the plight of an individual in limbo between two cultures.  He is the son of a young illegal immigrant who rejects him at birth for having two eyes of different colour, one black, one green. This dooms him to be branded a djinn, bringer of misfortune, symbol of the negative forces which bedevil the local community.  Yet his adoptive mother is an educated white woman whose untimely death leaves him ill-equipped to deal with harsh reality.  While he wishes to be accepted into a gang of disaffected black youths,  they only see him as a spoilt little rich boy, to be fleeced of his cash for them to spend on drugs and mocked for his natural politeness and, for them, ludicrous consideration for his pet dog.

The vivid descriptions of Mayotte and well-observed characters studies to some extent offset some scenes of extreme violence, which at times seems gratuitous. The author succeeds in arousing our sympathy even for the gang leader Bruce who has been brutalised by his own experience of rejection, and seems driven by jealousy of the privilege which Moïse enjoyed and took for granted in the past.

Highly praised, this book is worth reading,  particularly by those with little knowledge or understanding of the issues involved, although  it makes its key points early on, so that the agonising account of  Moïse’s predicament becomes somewhat repetitive,  even tedious.  My main criticism is that the different viewpoint adopted in each chapter includes characters who are clearly dead, but hover in spirit form, commenting on the scene in question. This may reflect the superstitions of the native culture, but felt like a surrealistic device too far.

I was intrigued by the possible ambiguity of the ending, left unsure whether it was a sad, but predictable because inevitable outcome, or if I was meant to read into it an ironic clever twist.

This has also been made into a film.

“Changer l’eau des fleurs” – Fresh water for flowers by Valerie Perrin

Violette has the unusual role of caretaker for the cemetery in the small French town of Brancion-en Chalon. With a tied house on site, the post was meant to be shared with her husband, but this idle philanderer, inaptly named Philippe Toussaint, rode out of her life on his motor cycle without warning nearly two decades previously.

In continual flashbacks, we learn how, born “Sous X” to an anonymous mother and brought up in children’s homes, the pretty but illiterate and unloved teenage Violette was an easy prey for control and exploitation by Toussaint. The birth of her daughter Leonine brings Violette great joy and a sense of purpose, but ties her more firmly to Philippe, until a tragic event which may also be a crime occurs.

Despite all this, the middle-aged Violette finds unexpected solace in the way of life which the cemetery provides: the ceremonies; the visitors; the incidents and anecdotes; the company of a team of undertakers, gravediggers and the Catholic priest with hearts of gold, if somewhat caricatured, and not least by the skill she has learned in planting her garden.

This novel has a filmic quality, no doubt due to Valerie Perrin’s work as a screenwriter, and her connection to the Director Claude Lelouch (of “Un Homme et Une Femme” fame). I wonder to what it extent it may have been inspired by John Irving’s “The Cider House Rules”, a book to which Violette appears to have become addicted.

A prize-winning bestseller in France, translated into many languages, “Changer l’Eau des Fleurs” (Fresh Water for Flowers) was the choice of my French reading group. I found the constant switches back and forth in time, including sub-plots to chart three often fraught love affairs over more than three decades, and clearly designed to build suspense, made it quite hard to keep track of the chronology – but by the end, this did not really matter. Also assuming different points of view, these flashbacks led to constant repetition, perhaps also intended to help the reader. A tendency to reel off a string of examples, when or two would do, and the inclusion of lengthy extracts from the lyrics of popular songs, contributed to the padding out of this book to 660 pages for a somewhat misnamed “Livre de Poche”. Admittedly, by checking out some of the singers on YouTube, I learned a little more about French popular culture.

Similarly, the novel is packed with colloquial idioms, but the desire to improve one’s French was stretched to the limit by the sense of being bombarded with melodrama, and some beyond ludicrous scenes, as when Violette, having somehow learned to ride a monocycle, scares the wits out of some noisy teenagers holding a midnight party in the cemetery, by careering down the alleys between the graves, draped in a shroud decorated with phosphorescent paint, a flashlight whistle between her lips. This was one of the points where I nearly abandoned reading, yet others have singled it out as hilarious. On the other hand, I appreciated a whole chapter devoted to random snatches of conversation heard by Violette as she gardened.

So, if one is not a reader who seeks to escape into a lengthy, sentimental soap opera, where flawed individuals sometimes redeem themselves, where events are often the result of tragic ironies, but the human spirit can survive with remarkable resilience despite it all, you can always choose a novel at the other end of the scale, like one of Claire Keegan’s, instead.

Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin – A question of balance

After graduating, French speaker Nathalie’s first contract is to design the costumes for a celebrated trio of athletes, dedicated to beating the women’s world record in the perilous feat of four consecutive triple leaps without landing in-between on the “Russian bar”, which you need to look up online if not familiar with it. This means an end-of-season journey to the Vladivostok Circus, located on the far eastern shore of Russia, where the team of two Russian “bases”, Anton and Nico, who support each end of the bar, and the young Ukrainian acrobat Anna, with their Canadian manager Leon, plan to prepare for their tour de force in the Siberian capital Ulan Ude – the author has a fascination for remote places.

Nathalie appears quite self-sufficient, and knows what to expect to some extent, having spent time in Vladivostok as a child, because of her father’ work. However, she has to win the trust of the group. Including Anton, who speaks little English, and to understand how they work, in order to conceive costumes which will enhance their performance without creating any physical or technical problems for them. There is an added stress in that Anna is a newcomer to the team, replacing the previous star Igor, who was crippled in a seven metre fall when he failed to land on the bar. Anna still has to prove herself, while Anton in particular may have been traumatised by the accident, plus he is possibly getting too old to continue the only way of life he knows.

Novels are often based on some specialism which the reader is unlikely to know much about: piano tuning, transplant surgery or trompe-l’œil painting to make a surface look like rare veined marble – in this case all aspects of circus performances on the Russian bar. This is revealed through detailed descriptions of the characters’ daily life, with a focus on the banal, while significant events tend to be implied, referred to in passing or covered in a single sentence – like Anna’s achievement of becoming the first woman to succeed in the four triples jumps with descending to the bar.

I discovered Elisa Shua Dusapin through her first novel, “Winter at Sokcho”, a quirky but brilliant portrayal of a young woman, who feels like an outsider, trapped in a dead-end seaside resort near the grim border with North Korea, never having known her father who was French engineer passing through, so attracted in turn to a French graphic designer who happens to visit Sokcho.

With my expectations perhaps raised too high, I found Vladivostock Circus a pale imitation of this. It lacks the striking, often beautiful prose of the earlier novel. There is still the strong sense of place, but although descriptions of the circus, closed down for the season, the port city and the long rail journeys all ring true, they are too often unbearably mundane, as for the most part are the characters’ activities and exchanges.

It may of course be the essential point that a good deal of tedium and dull routine lies behind great achievement – also that the moments of truest connection and deepest insight may occur in the course of nondescript, ordinary life.

This is the kind of low-key novel with a minimal plot, leaving much unclear, which has a “marmite” effect on readers who view it very differently. The chief interest for me lay in comparing the French text with the English translation, which is good, but dares to deviate a good deal from the original wording so that it give some scenes a different flavour.

Overall, there is too little substance to sustain a couple of hundred pages. Perhaps a shorter novella would have made a more powerful impact, with a wider appeal.