Post navigation ← FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #549: THE SUPER HUGOS Presented By Isaac Asimov BUFFALO BILLS VS. This entry was posted in Uncategorized on Octoby george. Do you have a favorite Simenon book? GRADE: A A los 14 años, Tati empieza a trabajar como sirvienta en la casa de los. For a slim, 152-page book, The Widow packs a wallop that will stay with you for a while. Read 110 reviews from the worlds largest community for readers. Amid all this drama, Simenon explores guilt, love, and desperation. Tati’s sister-in-law plots to oust her brother’s widow and take over the family homestead. Tati lives with her father-in-law who abuses her. Yet, as Theroux notes, The Widow, published the same year as Camus’s The Stranger, is a deeper and more profound work. A bus stops on the road to Montlucon, and there two strangers meet: Tati, a steely widow, who runs the farm her late. Most scholars dismissed Simenon as a commercial writer and hack.

Theroux points out that Simenon distrusted critics and scholars. It becomes clear after the first page of Theroux’s Introduction that he’s read plenty of Simenon and admires the prolific writer.

He also had an unusual arrangement, living with three women including his ex-wife, his wife, and his secretary all of whom also provided him with sexual entertainment. Theroux provides an insightful Introduction to The Widow and puts the novel in context with the hundreds of other novels Simenon wrote. Simenon’s second wife, after putting pen to paper, came up with a number closer to 1,200, still he was a busy little beaver. Simenon’s story of a stranger called Jean who arrives in a small French town and enters into a relationship with Tati, a widow, fascinated critics like Andre Gide and Paul Theroux. The Widow (aka, La veuve Couderc and Ticket of Leave) was first published in 1942 and has been reprinted several times.

The Widow by Georges Simenon