Stanlio
If you want to have the immediate, undeniable sense of Tolstoy's greatness in just a few pages, you only need to open this book. A story seemingly among the most ordinary – a mediocre, indistinct character discovers, after a trivial domestic accident, that he is afflicted with a terminal illness – the tale of Ivan Il’ic is perhaps the work where, more than ever, death becomes presence, interlocutor, even the evocative power of a new reality. (quote from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
There are rare books that not only appear perfect in every time, in every age, in every situation, but seem to contain something more that goes beyond literature: they are books that resemble happiness, as Sciascia memorably put it... (cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
- We are in Batum, on the Black Sea, in the early years of Stalin. Adil bey is the new Turkish consul.
He begins to look around.
He enters his office, "dirty with that gloomy dirt found in barracks and certain public offices."
He glances outside and sees two people leaning out of the window across the street.
- He spies on the spies, and meanwhile, his own body seems to be affected, a dark rage merging with fear.
And the anguish expands, nothing can stop it.
Against this backdrop, a tale of love, deceit, and death unfolds.
(cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
- After years of absence, Georges Simenon returns to Liège to witness the last days of his ninety-year-old mother. In the hospital room, two faded gray eyes are fixated on him: "Why did you come, Georges?"
- They have seen each other little for almost fifty years.
- ... only now does Simenon feel he understands his mother, and at the same time knows almost nothing about her...
(quote Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Popinga leaves the house and, closing the door, also steps out of himself; we encounter everything and cannot help but see it through his eyes.
The crime, the terror, the daydreaming, the solitude, the clarity, the meticulousness: they are new pieces on an old chessboard, and with their help, Popinga desperately tries to evade checkmate.
(quoted from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — Pedigree | DeRank™: 0,00

"Billions, billions and billions of animals on the face of the earth, in the air, in the water, everywhere, ceaselessly, minute by minute, make an effort of all their cells towards a becoming they do not know, like ants crossing precipices dragging burdens a hundred times their size, venturing among mountains of sand or mud and attempting ten times to assault the same obstacle, without their caravan changing course."
Thus they appeared, to Simenon's eye, the early years of his life: countless small gestures and little figures, clumps of pigment on an endless canvas. (cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
... one day the chieftain, Oscar the Shipowner, disappears.
From that moment starts this grand and meticulous chronicle, a story of disintegration that first engulfs La Rochelle and then spreads to Paris, transitioning from the sluggish rhythm of a seaside provincial city to the poisoned effervescence of the metropolis.
With the same certainty with which it was upheld, “the Donadieu order” collapses.
And in the collapse, it drags not only the clan but also the one who had been the cold agent of ruin: the social climber Philippe...
(quote from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
This is the first book I skimmed through in the blink of an eye by GS, and then inevitably the others followed in quick succession...
"A German scientist and his companion live in isolation on one of the Galápagos Islands, convinced that by doing so they are leaving behind the corrupted civilization and 'returning to a state of nature.' But Countess von Kleber, accompanied by two gigolos, also has plans for that dazzling fragment of land surrounded by the sea..." (from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
"I would so much like a man, just one man, to understand me.
And I would wish that man were you."
Thus the narrator addresses his judge, and consequently every reader, at the beginning of this novel. The story that follows is one of love and death, filled with intensity, exaltation, and anguish.
It is the story of a man who feels compelled to kill a woman because he loves her too much.
(cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Frank, the memorable protagonist of this novel, is nineteen years old and is the son of the attractive madam of a brothel in a Northern city during the Nazi occupation. Cold, aloof, insolent, solitary, Frank secretly desires just one thing: to initiate himself into life. And he believes that the best way to do this is by killing someone without reason. He does. Then he commits other crimes, always in some way gratuitous.
(cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Marie of the harbor is a figure that one cannot forget in the vast gallery of Simenon's women: an unassuming girl, a true "still water," who manages to captivate a brisk and bold man, accustomed to winning and commanding.
(cit Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — Betty | DeRank™: 0,00

A beautiful woman of scandalous behavior lands on a stool at a bar on the Champs-Élysées, her head muddled by alcohol.
What lies behind?
(quote Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — Pietr il Lettone | DeRank™: 0,00

- Maigret's presence at the Majestic inevitably had something hostile about it.
It was like a block of granite that the environment refused to assimilate.
- Not that he resembled the policemen made popular by caricatures.
He had neither a mustache nor double-soled shoes.
- "He had a particular way of positioning himself in a spot that sometimes proved unpleasant even to many colleagues"
(from Pietr il Lettone) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — La morte di Belle | DeRank™: 0,00

- In a quaint cottage in a quiet American town, an eighteen-year-old girl, Belle Sherman, is murdered. That evening, by chance, Professor Spencer Ashby – who was hosting the young girl, the daughter of a friend of his wife – was left alone in the house with her.
- "The righteous" begin to look at him with suspicion, to find him "different," to isolate him. This is enough to bring back in him ancient disturbances, sexual fantasies, an inner disorder that, after years of a smooth life, he believed to be dormant, repressed. The coroner presses on with his questioning, and the professor's precarious balance crumbles.
- Another reality will emerge, from the shell of horror. (cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — Turista da banane | DeRank™: 0,00

Oscar Donadieu, a sensitive and introverted young man, the last heir of a powerful shipowner clan from La Rochelle, lands in Tahiti dreaming “of immersing himself in nature, of living face to face with it and with it alone, renouncing the comforts of civilization.”
Yet, even during the crossing, someone warned him: “Perhaps it would be better not to disembark and to head straight back to France.”
This way, he would avoid becoming one of those whom the locals disparagingly call “banana tourists,” remnants of tropical life wandering between sad drunkenness, easy girls, squalid nights, and sordid dealings. (quoted from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
New York, night.
A man and a woman walk down Fifth Avenue.
They enter a bar.
They come out.
Another bar.
And they resume walking, tireless, as if there were nothing else they could do but walk: "as if they had always walked like this, through the streets of New York, at five in the morning."
As if the night should never end.
He knows nothing about her, she knows nothing about him.
She wobbles a bit on her heels that are too high... (cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
With an overly long coat and an incongruous fur hat on his head, a pale and feverish young man disembarks, on the eve of the Day of the Dead, in La Rochelle from a cargo ship coming from Trondheim. He will discover that he is the heir to his uncle's vast fortune, a man unknown to him, who lived in fierce solitude. He will also discover that his uncle held all the wealthy notables of the city in his grip, gathered in a sinister syndicate. (cited Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — Gli intrusi | DeRank™: 0,00

- they think of him: that he is a wasted talent, a lawyer who no longer takes on cases, a grumpy and useless drunk hiding at home like a wounded animal.
But that night, suddenly, something happens that forces the bear to leave its den: a gunshot, a shadow that fades down a hallway, and in a disused room on the second floor a man dying before his eyes.
What is that intruder doing in his house?
Who killed him?
What secrets does the old home hide behind its drowsy ancient walls?
And what torments his daughter, another stranger, behind that calm and submissive appearance? (cit. Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Georges Simenon — I Pitard | DeRank™: 0,00

- Finally, after so many years commanding others' ships, Captain Lannec has managed to buy himself a vessel; and despite his mother-in-law's protests and his wife's tears, he has named it Fulmine del Cielo, to evoke his favorite curse.
- Little by little, as if by an unappealable court ruling that the ancients called Fate, what was meant to be the first, triumphant voyage of the Fulmine del Cielo will turn into a nightmare... (quoted from Adelphi) more
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Stanlio
With a master's touch, Simenon takes us through all the stages of a turbulent and tragic amour fou, gifting us one of his most intensely erotic, heartbreaking, and passionate novels. (cit. Adelphi) more
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