A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site


buy us books !
Amazon wishlist

the complete review - fiction

Chourmo

by
Jean-Claude Izzo

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B : nice tone, and a vivid picture of Marseilles, though a bit messy as a thriller

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "But what makes his work haunting is his extraordinary ability to convey the tastes and smells of Marseilles, and the way memory and obligation dog every step his hero takes." - The New Yorker
  
  
• "The novel proceeds apace and contains its various plots well. The atmosphere is lightly captured. There are some nice local references -- IAM and Georges Brassens -- but the city is registered through street names rather than by evocative description." - Emilie Bickerton< Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

       At the start of Chourmo 45 year old now retired cop Fabio Montale has left Total Chaos behind him: looking out at the sea, he's happy do be doing nothing, with no real ambitions. But this is Marseilles, and just as he can never escape the beloved city he can't escape its seedy and dangerous side.
       The book actually starts with a Prologue, teenagers Guitou and Naïma getting together for their first intimate night in the house of a friend. In a nice touch, Guitou immediately gets his pockets picked at the train station on the way to his rendezvous: there's no easy path to happiness in Izzo's Marseilles. Things get a bit better (the night together is a success) and then much worse: Guitou and the other person staying at the house wind up dead.
       As it happens, Guitou is the youngest son of Fabio's cousin, Gélou, and when he goes missing she begs Fabio to help her find him. Fabio finds out soon enough that it's not simply a case of the boy running away, but of murder. And, of course, it gets worse: almost as soon as he sets out to find the boy an acquaintance of his, a youth worker (with a bit too much of a penchant for the youths ...) is killed in front of him.
       Fabio is a melancholy guy, and he can't understand why we (or at least everybody in Marseilles) can't just get along. He sympathizes with the outsiders (his Italian roots make him an immigrant who understands what the Arabic immigrants are going through) and understands why the youths act as they do. But he's also hardnosed when he has to be -- even ruthless, when push comes to shove (as it will in the climax).
       So Chourmo is a somewhat strange mix of street-thriller and social novel. The ills of society are obvious at every turn, from a police force that almost invariably takes the wrong approach to the far reach of the Mafia (which turns out to reach very, very far), to the lack of opportunity for so many of the youths and immigrants in Marseilles -- leading, among much else, to a resurgence of increasingly militant Islam. (This 1996 novel already had a good take on many of the French troubles that bubbled over in 2005.)
       And then, of course, there's chourmo:

     He smiled. "And there's the chourmo. Know what that is ?"
     I knew. Chourmo, a Provençal word derived from chiourme, the rowers in a galley. In Marseilles, we knew all about galleys. No need to kill your mother and father to find yourself in the galleys, just like two centuries ago. No, these days, you just had to be young, whether you were an immigrant or not.

You weren't just from one neighborhood, one project. You were chourmo. In the same galleys, rowing ! Trying to get out. Together.

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• Europa editions publicity page
• Unionsverlag publicity page

• carpe librum (German)
• carpe librum (German)
• Vince Keenan
• Krimi-Couch.de (German)
• Leselust (German)
• Mostly Fiction
• The New Yorker
• Publishers Weekly
• Three Guys One Book

• Official site

• Garlic, Mint, and Sweet Basil
• [The Lost Sailors]
• Solea
• Total Chaos

• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
• See Index of French literature
• See Index of Series and Sequels under review

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       Jean-Claude Izzo was a popular French author. He was born in 1945 and died in 2000.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2006-2021 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links