A review by furfff
Maigret in Society by Georges Simenon

4.0

I read this one out of a used copy of A Maigret Trio, and every time I picked up the battered book, I would get vaguely annoyed at the cover art work, with the iconic hat and pipe hovering amidst the title. Yeah, those things are iconic of the character, but at least for me, it feels like a great contribution to the literary canon reduced to a set of emojis. Maigret in Society, in particular, is a real deep success to me. The "mystery" itself is... not that complicated.. but one of those where you couldn't have really guessed it until the end because the crucial data doesn't come until the end. So the mystery part was ok, but it's never really why I read these books. That usually has to do with just a phenomenal collection of brilliant turns of phrase or some larger theme that Simenon is wrestling with (and indeed wrestling with; not suggesting he fully understands... much like his protagonist mid-case). Here, we have the impenetrable and fundamentally unknowable-from-the-outside rules of capital-S Society. In a way, this might seem like a topic not worth spending time on as a current-day reader, because what is capital-S Society anymore (at least the one that Simenon portrays?) And yet, there's something really resonant here to modern-day, the way people can tie themselves to notions or other people, come hell or high water. Sometimes, in the case of an addict or someone about to engage in criminal activity, that's a terrible thing. In the case of people in love with a person or the act of creating a thing or art, that can be an ultimately amazing thing. But either way, to those on the outside of either of those devotions, it can be a momentarily isolating thing in a deeply human way. Being the author that he is, Simenon lets Maigret get distrubed, and really keeps him disturbed at novel's end, in a way that's maybe a little sad but really quite identifiable.