Reading in French

Apparently I should study languages to keep my elderly brain alive.  I'm not good at languages. Teachers at my school sometimes commented that I wasn't a natural linguist. This didn't stop me. I wanted to immerse myself in languages so that there would be more books to read.

As a treat to myself, I ordered two more books by Maurice Gouiran. I haven't come across anyone in the U.K. who has read Maurice Gouiran and when I order his books I have to go through the website of Jigal, his Marseille publisher. He's never been translated into English.

I came across his books a few years ago, when on holiday in Marseille. Franco Est Mort Jeudi had just been published in paperback and I bought a copy to read on the train home. I didn't understand every word - there's a lot of contemporary slang and my French vocabulary isn't as large as I'd like (I want to know every single word in the dictionary). But my O-level French from many years ago, topped up by six months of evening classes, was enough to take me through the book. 

When I got home I looked up some of the words in the big dictionary but they weren't all there. Despite some difficulties, I found the book gripping. It's in the Chandleresque tradition but with a French twist - and while Philip Marlowe has little concern with his country or city's past, Gouiran, often through his  series detective Clovis Narigou, is deeply concerned with uncomfortable episodes from the past which are too often forgotten. That's particularly interesting because Marseille has always been a place where people of different nations and races live together.

The novels I  have read are fuelled by an anger which is probably most apparent in Putains de  Pauvres! which is concerned with the contempt so many people feel for the poor. But the novels have humour too, as well as mystery, suspense and a cast of excellently-drawn characters, many of whom haunt the Beau-Bar in Estaque. Currently I'm enjoying Sur Nos Cadavres Ils Dansent Le Tango, a novel which includes an investigation into the French in Algeria in the early 1960s and fascism in Argentina, as well as contemporary extreme right politics and attitudes.

I wish my French were better - and I wish someone would translate these novels into English. (They'd make pretty good films or TV serials too, although no actor would quite live up to the image I have of Clovis Narigou or the more recent character, police lieutenant Emma Govgaline.) But for the meantime, I'm exercising my 60-year-old brain, not because I ought to do so, but for the pleasure it gives.