In a sign of just how ridiculously behind and disorganised I've been of late, A CASE OF MATRICIDE has been lurking around here for months now, and it's the third novel in a series that I'd failed to even start. Now I'm reading it back to front because this was such a fascinating read.
Fascinating partly because Burnet has a writing style that elegantly combines wry humour with detailed observational elements that never become overblown, blurring boundaries between characters and the reader, all whilst having a good rummage around in the darkest recesses of people's minds.
It's also partly because of the story behind this series that is ... complicated. The novels are purported to be fiction written by Raymond Burnet, translated and introduced posthumously by Graeme Macrea Burnet. Set shortly before 1992, the year in which Raymond supposedly committed suicide, A CASE OF MATRICIDE is located in Saint-Louis, the small French town where Raymond lived, an observer of the people around him, including Chief Inspector Georges Gorski (it's hard not to imagine there's a hat tip in that first name).
Whilst it all might sound a bit far fetched, even for metafiction, there's something about this artifice that works. It's delivered in a rather matter-of-fact manner, leaving the reader with plenty of room to flow with the premise, helped along the way by the gifted writer who is undertaking the challenge. The sense of place is pitch perfect, and the character's French in feeling and attitude, leading to no narrative bumps along the way. It even works as a standalone, certainly allowing a numerically challenged reader like myself to slip into this series at the wrong end, with ease.
Gorski is a policeman, who despite being a Chief Inspector, does things the old way. He does rounds in and about the town on foot, he talks to people, he drinks in small bars where he can overhear the gossip, and opinions. He's helped in this low-key, rambling pursuit of life by a recent divorce from a wife that nobody could ever quite work out how he married in this first place. Considerably above his station in life, Céline, is enjoying a nice holiday away at her father's expense, and his daughter, Clémence, is with her maternal grandparents. It's just Gorski and his failing mother in the small flat above the shop his father ran until his death. Keeping an eye on the older lady, the married woman who now runs a flower shop below them, seems to be the only person who gets how lonely, and lost Gorski seems. Despite a worklife that keeps him busy. In this novel, an investigation into a suspicious stranger alongside a couple of other odd cases - a housebound woman who is convinced her son killed her dog and is slowly poisoning her, then the heart-attack death of factory owner, a cause of death which Gorski doesn't buy.
Haunted by demons, Gorski struggles with the end of his marriage, with the failing health, and future of his mother, and events from his past. There's a story of a broken mustard spoon that has worried at him since childhood, an indication of how his parents regarded him, but even more, it's about how he processes guilt and involvement, and how his life has been consumed by small things. It's also his examination of external and internal musings, what people know about, and what we imagine they know. It fits with the sort of curtain twitching knowledge of others that happens in small villages like this. It's also a source of humour, as unlikely as that sounds, as musings on a mustard spoon demonstrates the little things that embarrass, that stay with us, blowing up in our minds to be more than, in this case, the future of a mother who is obviously going to need caring for, or what happened to make an unlikely marriage fizzle into nothing, or what a stranger is doing in a small village, and why another son and mother are at odds, and what to do about a florist.
If for absolutely no other reason, I'm grateful I finally managed to get some organisation into the stacks and read A CASE OF MATRICIDE. The two earlier books - The Accident on the A35 (2nd in the series) and The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau (1st) are now here, ready to be read.
A Case of Matricide
In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s bars, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski mulls over the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.
Graeme Macrae Burnet pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this deeply human story. He draws a wry humour from the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds to present a fascinating puzzle that blurs the boundaries between suspect, investigator and reader in an entertaining, profound and moving novel.
Add comment