SUNDAY: and THE LITTLE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL

by Georges Simenon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 1966

Two short, back-to-back character studies, balancing the fine line between the novel/mystery forms for double audience interest. Simenon's hallmarks, when he works in this fashion, are the isolation of his subjects and their entrapment in circumstance. Sunday has the power and pace; The Little Man...has the sympathy. Both deal with strangers standing a little outside their communities. In Sunday a resort owner-chef slides from boyhood to manhood reserving his rebellion against authority for his wife rather than his mother, taking a boy's pleasure in deception and rejection. At first slowly, then with a regular pulse, the story of his ordinary routine leads to the disastrous day he has set for murder. The Little Man from Archangel is a variation on the Who Killed Cock Robin theme. All of the neighborhood, his past and his present, and the fear of being suspect which drove him to lie, arraign themselves against Jonas, a bookseller whose wife disappeared, whose murder is rumored. Studies in frustration and fear, both absorbing, revealing.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION