On a Book, Just Delivered: ‘The Widow Couderc’ by Georges Simenon
At 18.4 × 11.4 centimeters, the book is a handsome, petit hardback. The dominant color of the exterior panels is baby blue. Sparse white text declares key identifying details and bears a quote enticing prospective readers with the protagonist’s aimlessness, an existential crisis draining the world of past and future, reducing all to a not entirely unpleasant present. The cover illustration is a detail from The Canal des Alpilles by French painter Émile Colinus. The foreground is dominated by a tree gathering its late afternoon shadows about its base. To the right, a canal runs toward white houses like hills. To the left, the widow walks along a footpath. Typeset in Dante MT Std. on paper mildly rough to the touch, the text is visually and tactilely pleasant. On the back flap of the dust jacket is a black-and-white photo in which the author can be seen leaning on a tribal statue and looking pensive, perhaps a bit worried, a pipe tucked into the corner of his mouth. The text underneath tells us he lived from 1903 to 1989. The book is The Widow Couderc by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, and it arrived today.
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