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.

In her trilogy of novellas which takes its overall name from the third story, “La femme rompue”, or “The Woman Destroyed”, Simone de Beauvoir, celebrated feminist writer and longstanding companion and lover of Jean Paul Sartre, portrays three women not dealing well with a crisis in later life. In each case, the crisis is due partly to external factors, including the behaviour of others, but also appears to be partly of their own making.

In l’Âge de discretion (The Age of Discretion), the first story, the sixty-something narrator is increasingly disappointed by her husband’s premature acceptance of ageing and being “past it”, and depressed by the unexpectedly lukewarm reception of her new work. Her complacency is shattered by the discovery that her son Phillipe has rejected the academic profession into which she has steered him, and the left-wing values of his parents, for a career making money. De Beauvoir’s clear, expressive prose with its sharp dialogues explores every facet of the narrator’s changing emotions as the facts are gradually revealed.

She contrives to create some sympathy for the woman, even while exposing the full extent of her failings: she often appears to be an unreliable witness, is jealous of the suspected influence on Philippe of his partner Irène, has sought to control Philippe too much herself, and proves overemotional and extreme in her reactions when she cannot have her way.

The same mixed response applies to Monique in “La Femme Rompue”, although I feel rather more sympathy for her as the growing sense that she has lost connection with her husband triggers his confession that there is indeed “another woman” in his life, but not one that Monique can respect – as if that would really ease her pain. Published in the 1960s, it would seem that de Beauvoir is writing this as a cautionary tale for women who put all their eggs in the basket of sacrificing a career to support a husband and children, running the risk of losing all of these, with nothing to fall back on.

I was least satisfied with the shortest story, “Monologue”, in which a dense stream of consciousness is spouted by an ageing woman who has gone mad in her desire for revenge on those who have wronged her. It is exhausting and tedious (perhaps intentionally!) and somewhat confusing if read in French as a second language. This bleak, disjointed recital seems simplistic in suggesting that the narrator’s sense of her mother’s neglect and preference for her brother when she was growing up can be blamed as the initial cause of a chain of dysfunctional relationships, including with her own daughter. “Monologue” differs from the other novellas, in that it reads like an exercise in creative writing, which lacks authenticity because De Beauvoir is too cool and controlled to identify with her crazed character.

The quay of Conakry harbour is crowded with Guineans, mesmerised by the spectacle of a body suspended from the mast of a sailing boat in an apparent vicious act of revenge, but for what reason? The victim is a wealthy Frenchman who may have had a large amount of money stashed on board after selling his business, so was theft the main motive? Bored in his job, with secret dreams of being a detective, the unlikely consul at the local French embassy,  Aurel Timescu, cannot resist the unexpected opportunity to investigate the crime unofficially in his manager’s convenient absence.

The first in a series which has proved popular, this novel marks a change in direction for author Jean-Christophe Rufin. With an impressive career path as a doctor playing a leading role in Médecins Sans Frontières, and as a diplomat, his past novels have been located in a variety of countries, but tend to focus on serious themes and moral issues.  In some ways, “Le suspendu de Conakry” follows this pattern, with its references to the corruption and lack of freedom in  formerly communist Romania, Aurel’s country of origin,  to  the problems of post-colonial Guinea and the insidious network of the international drug trade.

However, as detective fiction it seems quite formulaic: divorced anti-hero with a drink problem, on bad terms with his boss. Habitually wearing an ankle-length mac in a country with an average temperature of over 80° F, Aurel is widely mocked and underestimated.  Yet he somehow manages to establish a rapport with hints of possible romance with Jocelyne, the murder victim’s glamorous sister. This is despite behaving like a gauche adolescent in her company. Although Rufin has claimed when interviewed that Aurel is based on embassy staff he has met, he seems to have carried absurdity too far.

The plot is rather thin and banal, with Aurel largely relying on information he deploys young  local men, like Hassan who works for the embassy, to glean by quizzing possible witnesses and suspects.  There is a potentially interesting twist in  Aurel’s persistent attempt to understand the psychology of Jacques Mayères. Influenced by his Romanian culture which fosters a belief in ghosts, he even imagines that Jacques is looking at him from a photograph.  This apparently assists Aurel to work out how the crime occurred but the  eventual denouement seems implausible  and contrived in too many respects. For the most part slow-paced, the novel concludes abruptly, still dangling a few loose ends. 

This proves an easy read which leaves one feeling dissatisfied, because some promising ingredients  could have been handled better.

Romain Gary was a popular and prolific author, the only writer to win Le prix Goncourt a second time, by dint of assuming the pen name Émile Ajar, an imaginary person whom he persuaded a young relative to impersonate. The deception was not revealed until after his death.

This autobiography proves to be a version of his childhood and wartime experience as an airman in which it is impossible to distinguish embellished fact from fiction. Its central theme is the intense relationship with his mother, a volatile, overemotional former actress of Russian-Jewish descent. Abandoned by her husband between the two World Wars, she was obliged to slave away at a variety of jobs, from flogging fake jewellery at one extreme to running a successful upmarket dressmaking salon and later managing a hotel at the other.

As her son came to realise, all her frustrated ambition was channelled into him. From an early age, she parroted her unfailing belief that he would become famous, the only question being in what field. A fortune was spent equipping him with skills as a musician or singer, until his lack of talent became undeniable. Instruction in riding, fencing and shooting came into play. Painting was discouraged since she viewed artists as generally penniless and often syphilitic. She condoned her son’s desire to become a writer, but predicted the only remaining areas of achievement she could conceive: to become a great soldier, or a diplomat. In due course, Romain was decorated for his wartime service, and gained employment as an ambassador, thus providing evidence for the importance of having unfailing belief in one’s children and encouraging them to aspire to great things – but in this case, at what cost?

There was a further self-serving aspect of his mother’s love. Struck by his resemblance to a former lover (his real father?), she constantly urged him to look upwards in a certain manner. Even as a small boy, dressed in the silk shirts and velvet suits from a previous age to accompany her to the opera, he was instructed in all the etiquette required to be her future escort, in the absence of a husband.

It is astonishing that he did not become the laughing stock of his peers and emotionally damaged by all this. Yet perhaps he was. Apart from the many occasions when he was embarrassed by his mother’s effusive love, or furious over being obliged to depend on her financially while he was trying to write his masterpiece, when she became seriously ill, he was clearly stressed by the need to succeed while she was still alive, all the more difficult since World War ll had broken out. His emotional ties to his mother ran so deep that he even described her as if physically present, by turns approving and admonishing, during his wartime spell with the Free French in Africa.

The novel is packed with amusing, if far-fetched anecdotes. As a small boy seeking to impress eight-year-old Valentine, did he actually consume snails in their shells, and chunks of his own rubber sandals, which landed him in hospital? Did he and the rival for her affections really take turns to push each other onto a fourth floor window with just sufficient pressure to swing their legs over the edge, without falling to a certain death? Meeting by chance years later, both by then diplomats, was he really on the point of repeating this mad exploit, just before he was fortunately called away?

There is a brilliant description of his mother, in her role of hotel manager in Nice, terrorising the stallholders on her daily visit to the marché de la Buffa, a she passes judgement on their produce: elle “tâtait une escalope, méditait sur l’âme d’un melon, rejetait avec mépris une pièce de bœuf dont flop mou sur le marbre prenait un accent d’humiliation” and so on.

Yet this account of a life sufficiently interesting not to require any spicing up soon began to pall owing to the repetition, the verbosity, the odd mixture of exaggerated self-denigration and conceit, the frequent digression into an issue like his need to achieve, expounded in a paragraph of two pages or more of overblown prose. All this made for an exhausting read.

If it is to your taste, and you can stomach Gary’s somewhat sexist behaviour, which is what some reviewers may mean when describing the book as “dated”, you can read this to be entertained by the succession of implausible and at times unsavoury vignettes and exploits. I am most intrigued by the psychology behind all this. He wrote, to quote the English translation, “I do not often indulge in lying, because, for me, a lie has a sickly flavour of impotence: it leaves me too far away from the mark.” Yet the account is full of lies and deceptions, which he may have slipped into as a way of dealing with his mother’s overpowering love and belief that France was the model land where he would succeed.

It is hard to know how much he was traumatised by the shocking death rate amongst his fellow wartime pilots. Despite observing more than once how, no matter how bad things are, he keeps smiling, this is the man who, at the age of sixty-eight, decided to shoot himself fatally.