When I Was Old by Georges Simenon review – confessions of a crime writer

First published in French in 1970 and translated two years later by Helen Eustis, these three notebooks written from 1960 to 1962 are being reissued by Penguin alongside their admirable project to publish all 75 of Simenon’s Maigret novels. He began writing the notebooks on 25 June 1960, after completing a novel he dismissively described as his “hundred-eightieth-and-some”. An astonishingly prolific author, Simenon recalls that he used to have a contract with Gallimard to write six novels a year, “because in terms of income, that corresponded to my style of life”. His writing had made him a very wealthy man, but, aged 57 and troubled by his health, he was clearly haunted by his own mortality. These personal, even confessional notebooks, were written for his young family, to “show my children that I’ve had my weaknesses”. As well as his footloose early life, living on a boat writing Maigret novels (which he dismisses as “minor works”), the Belgian author frankly discusses his promiscuity and alcoholism, his fascination with criminology, his writing (“hours of anguish rather than euphoria”) and his intense love for his family. A revealing glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest detective writers of the 20th century.