I am slightly ambivalent about The Strangers In The House. A good deal of it was excellent, but there are aspects I wasn’t so keen on.
First published 1940, it’s a story with a pretty well-worn trope at its heart: a misanthropic recluse forced back into daily life by circumstance and beginning to live again. This part, Simenon does with great subtlety and considerable insight, I think, as a murder in the house of lawyer Hector Loursat brings him inevitably back into contact with the pre-war small-town society he has shunned and despised for so long. I found the portrait of Loursat, of his small household and of the bourgeoisie of the town very convincing and rather gripping. Curiously, the story of the murder seemed much less successful – especially its courtroom denouement which didn’t ring true at all – which meant that the book rather lost its way for me, although the central thread of Loursat’s character continued to be very well done.
I have been somewhat dubious about all of Simenon’s non-Maigret books that I have read; this was one of the better ones for me. I see that John Banville has described it as a masterpiece and it does carry many of the hallmarks of Banville’s own work in its intense study of the minutiae of a character’s behaviour and personality, although it has a commendable concision which Banville often lacks. I can’t agree that it’s a masterpiece, but it has enough real quality to be an involving and rewarding read which I can recommend.
(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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