The Venice Train - BookWyrm

No cover — Georges Simenon, Ros Schwartz: The Venice Train (2022, Penguin Books, Limited)

English language

Published Oct. 19, 2022 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-199884-8

(1 review)

"Pourquoi toute l'image ̌tait-elle centře sur sa fille ? Cela le g̊nait un peu, ou plut̥t c'est apr̈s surtout qu'il y pensa, une fois le train en marche. Et encore ne fut-ce, en řaliť, qu'une impression fugace, ňe au rythme du wagon et aussit̥t absorb̌e par le paysage. Pourquoi Joše et non sa femme ou son jeune fils, alors qu'ils ̌taient group̌s tous les trois dans la moiteur du soleil ? Peut-̊tre parce que la silhouette de sa fille, dans une gare, debout devant un train en partance, ̌tait plus incongrue ? Elle avait douze ans; elle ̌tait grande et mince, les jambes et les bras encore gr̊les, et les bains de mer, le soleil de la plage avaient donň ̉ses cheveux blonds des reflets argenťs"--Page 4 of cover.

A casual meeting with a mysterious man on a train from Venice leads Georges Justin Calmar into a series of serious …

"Pourquoi toute l'image ̌tait-elle centře sur sa fille ? Cela le g̊nait un peu, ou plut̥t c'est apr̈s surtout qu'il y pensa, une fois le train en marche. Et encore ne fut-ce, en řaliť, qu'une impression fugace, ňe au rythme du wagon et aussit̥t absorb̌e par le paysage. Pourquoi Joše et non sa femme ou son jeune fils, alors qu'ils ̌taient group̌s tous les trois dans la moiteur du soleil ? Peut-̊tre parce que la silhouette de sa fille, dans une gare, debout devant un train en partance, ̌tait plus incongrue ? Elle avait douze ans; elle ̌tait grande et mince, les jambes et les bras encore gr̊les, et les bains de mer, le soleil de la plage avaient donň ̉ses cheveux blonds des reflets argenťs"--Page 4 of cover.

A casual meeting with a mysterious man on a train from Venice leads Georges Justin Calmar into a series of serious surprises that cause him to lose control over his own life. The man asks Calmar to deliver a package to a person in Paris for him. But when Calmar gets to the recipent's apartment, he finds her dead, and panics. While searching newspapers for clues to his situation, he finds out that the man who gave him the package has been murdered as well. Calmar, now frantic and thinking he will be the next victim, looks into the package and finds a fortune in various currencies. Attempting to hide his windfall from his wife and coworkers, Calmar becomes increasingly paranoid.

12 editions

Stephanie Jane reviewed The Venice Train by Georges Simenon

Superb character study

5 stars

While I am not particularly a fan of the Maigret novels, I do love Georges Simenon's character study works and, for me, The Venice Train has to be one of his best. Justin Calmar firmly believes himself to be a man of integrity, albeit one who has allowed his life's trajectory to be dictated by other people's expectations for him. As the result of a chance meeting on a long distance train, however, Justin finds himself questioning how much of what he does day to day is actually what he wants to do and how genuine his self belief really is.

Justin is an unusual character in that, while his actions lead and completely determine the course of this novel, he spends practically every waking minute questioning himself and second-guessing what he should do. He becomes the ultimate overthinker which meant that I could strongly empathise with his predicament! In …

While I am not particularly a fan of the Maigret novels, I do love Georges Simenon's character study works and, for me, The Venice Train has to be one of his best. Justin Calmar firmly believes himself to be a man of integrity, albeit one who has allowed his life's trajectory to be dictated by other people's expectations for him. As the result of a chance meeting on a long distance train, however, Justin finds himself questioning how much of what he does day to day is actually what he wants to do and how genuine his self belief really is.

Justin is an unusual character in that, while his actions lead and completely determine the course of this novel, he spends practically every waking minute questioning himself and second-guessing what he should do. He becomes the ultimate overthinker which meant that I could strongly empathise with his predicament! In the space of a hundred and seventy or so pages, this outwardly happy but discontented family man descends into a deep paranoia, basically caused by his fear of not being believed if he comes clean about a moment's panic in a Lausanne apartment block.

The Venice Train is an incredibly introverted novel. We spend most of the time navigating Justin's thought processes and only sporadically stepping aside to see that the impervious front he thought he had created is transparent to pretty much everyone who knows him. This makes for an utterly compelling read in a disconcerting 'watching an imminent car crash' way. I was confident quite early on that things would not ultimately turn out well for Justin, but Simenon takes his man in a very different direction to the one I had imagined. I loved the tense details and seemingly inconsequential minutiae, all of which build to a shockingly abrupt climax. The Venice Train is perfectly paced and a masterclass in prose portraiture.