Manhattan

Reference 1 being a rather strange - and I believe commercially very successful - story from Simenon. And Bing knows all about a film from 1965. No idea if that was the first or only one. Set in New York and written shortly after he arrived in North America in 1945 (France not being very sure about his war record) and was living at a place called Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson, a small place about 50km north west of Montreal. One supposes that Simenon knew New York well enough from visits.

The story of a middle aged French actor, newly divorced, by no means broke but living in reduced circumstances in a small flat in New York, who meets a French-ish lady desperate for somewhere to stay for the night in a night café. Various adventures are squashed into a week or so. She goes off to Mexico to attend to her sick daughter, then with her Hungarian diplomat father. She comes back and the two of them sail off into the sunset, prodigiously in love.

The sort of adventure of which I have little understanding and even less experience. I found the often wounding behaviour of the hero very strange. Both hero and heroine appeared to be heavy smokers and reasonably heavy drinkers. A story which can be read as a spin-off from his meeting Denyse Ouimet in New York in 1945, she being the lady who later became his second wife. A marriage born in passion which ended in tears, back in Europe, some fifteen years later. I dare say I will read the story again at some point. Will I fall for the film?

Book shop in blue

The next street

What looks like a very old church at the bottom of the street

A very decent, if inexpensive, hardback from Presses de la Cité from 1960. Beautifully wrapped and addressed, for the very first time, to 'Monsieur James Toller'. I had bought it from a small bookshop in Vallon en Sully in the middle of France, via eBay France. On the Cher, and as it happens a little to the west of Moulins, the nearest big town to where Maigret was born and raised. Otherwise, half way between Tours and Lyon.

A provincial France which I don't suppose I am ever going to get to see now. Which is a pity.

PS: interesting Google Street View camera artefact across the spire of the church. Yet to work out what has happened there.

Reference 1: Trois Chambres à Manhattan - Georges Simenon - 1946.

Reference 2: Petit Evelyne, Bouquiniste - 3 rue Marcel Gaumy, 03190 Vallon en Sully, France.