Man Who Wasn'T Maigret Book

Things I Have Learned From Reading The Man Who Wasn't Maigret:
1) Simenon was incredibly prolific (44 books in one year makes James Patterson look positively lazy)
2) He had sex an awful lot (10000 women in a lifetime sounds exhausting)
3) He lied more often than not, even fictionalising his memoirs.

I was more than a little underwhelmed by this 'portrait' of a great writer. My eyes glazed as whole sections of information about other people were included, André Gide for example was a very interesting man I'm sure but I didn't really care about his life story when reading about Georges Simenon. And this is repeated by the writer throughout the book.

The 'portrait' was occasionally turned in to an analysis of Simenon's body of work, comparing and contrasting themes for pages at a time. Again this could be interesting stuff for somebody who wanted to read a literary dissertation but not not what I was wanting or expecting.

Patrick Marnham could possibly have used some of Simenon's skill at getting under the skin of his characters and really gotten to know how the man worked but I guess when dealing with someone as reclusive and dishonest as this subject it was quite a hard task.