Félicien Marceau: La Terrasse de Lucrezia (1993)

Casually looking for a job in Rome, the young Lucezia happens to find out that one of the most luxurious hotels in Rome want a laundry maid, so her luck is in. And while she's attending to the laundry in room 504, the most luxurious in the hotel and which has just been vacated, she notices that an electrician is fixing a socket. Their eyes meet, Lurezia bolts the door, and the bed sheets are waiting for them. Later, Lurezia slightly lies about this event and calls it her honeymoon night.

This sex romp is in fact not mentioned until Chapter VI of the book, which begins with the law Professor Lamberti rather innappropriately describing the wife of the former electrician as 'piquante' at a co-owners' meeting in a luxury block of flats on the outskirts of Rome. Lucrezia and Antonio are one of four couples who have applied to live in and attend to the daily activities in the block, and, heavily supported by the Professor who is of course smitten by Lucrezia, the couple are unanimously voted in.

And so Lucrezia begins to dominate the appartment block, in spite of her inappropriate behaviour, such as delivering the co-owners their mail and telling them the contents of the postcards' contents before they've looked at them. But she doesn't get criticised for this, and even when she thinks she's overstepped the mark by opening a telegramme for Mme Soardo she comes up trumps, and even receives a gift of a seventeenth century writing desk from Mme Soardo for her troubles.

Antonio and Lucrezia are discounted from a theft from one of the rooms by the Professor, who tells the police to investigate someone else, although Antonio has been frequenting a bar where some very rough criminal types go. But Antonio is killed shortly after when he speeds round a hairpin bend into a fire engine: the ever-smitten law Professor manages to find the pompiers guilty instead of Antonio, and Lucrezia receives a huge indemnity. She can't go wrong.

Lucrezia goes on to not only pocket her own and her husband's salaries for looking after the building, but she also easily wins over the Professor by telling him that she can run the flats better than the present manager, so she also snags that job (with a 10% increase) on top of what she's already earning.

Added to this, she has two children by Antonio – Alberto (who is to become Count Alberto and maybe a famous tennis player) and Isabella (due to marry Eric, the nephew of the king of Sweden). The reader might be tempted to call Lucrezia a scheming little bitch, which may be true, but she's also highly intelligent and extremely lucky. And Félicien Marceau does humorous novels very well.

My Félicien Marceau posts:
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Félicien Marceau: La Terrasse de Lucrezia
Félicien Marceau: Creezy

Félicien Marceau: Creezy (1969)

Creezy – obviously a distortion of the English word 'crazy', and the same title of which was used in the English translation – is a story of not-so-everyday madness, but certainly of the madness of consumerism and the inability of the market to supply certain demands, such as love or happiness.

Creezy begins and ends in the same place, with député Jacques waiting a half-hour for the engine noise in his car to be fixed in the garage. While he's waiting, though, the reader learns why his life is such a mess, why he no longer has a wife and of the events leading up to the death of his beloved Creezy.

Jacques first caught a glimpse of Creezy – a beautiful and famous fashion model – at the front of the audience at a show. After that he meets her at an airport, the pair hit it off very well in sitting next to each other during the flight, and Creezy seems to be another of the conquests of the député (married with two children).

A fling becomes an obsession, lust turns to love and therefore psychological dependence, and all the hell that that brings. No, Jacques can't keep two lives together and things start to fall apart quickly. There's no indication of this in the form of the book, though, which consists of eighteen sections in a single paragraph, apart from when occasionally being split to incorporate quotations.

Creezy marks my thirtieth Goncourt winner reading, although this relatively short (197-page) novel feels  – at the moment at least, although I'll definitely reread it one day for confirmation or otherwise – like one of the best of them.

The grave of Félicien Marceau (1913–2012) in Le cimetière ancien de Neuilly:

My Félicien Marceau posts:

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Félicien Marceau: La Terrasse de Lucrezia

Félicien Marceau: Creezy

Félicien Marceau, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine (92)

'Louis CARETTE dit Félicien MARCEAU

de l'Académie française 1913 – 2012'

Félicien Marceau was a French playwright and novelist born in Belgium. His most noted play is L'Œuf (1956), which is developed from his novel Chair et cuir (1951). His novel Creezy (1969) won the Goncourt on its year of publication: it concerns a cover girl and a député who are deeply in love but whose relationship backfires, and Marceau described it as a very modern story. The grave is in the Cimetière ancien de Neuilly.