Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Chourmo is one of these novels I had always promised myself to read, because it was held is such high regards by people whose opinion I trust.
Las ! The context might grasp the interest of any reader familiar with or fascinated by this graal of all cities that is Marseille. But as for the novel, I can barely see anything good to say. Political comments ooze from the author in every scene - not that Izzo has his heart in the wrong place ; more that he has his pen in the wrong hand, if not in the wrong limb. The style is full of teenage pathos without ever reaching the beautiful rough poetry that a James Lee Burke, a writer with an equal tendency towards whingeing, achieves. The situations are often predictable and the characters lacking the depth or idiosyncrasy that would make them attaching to me. As a social mirror, Chourmo is far from any of Georges Simenon's novels. As a pure noir novel, it is nowhere near any of Manchette's stories.
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