But the same sympathy that drew me towards Mary made me reluctant to accept in its entirety Austen’s version of her. The qualities that condemn her in Pride and Prejudice did not seem so heinous to me. I thought her efforts to educate herself, in the face of her family’s indifference, commendable rather than ridiculous. And the earnestness that resulted from her lonely endeavours seemed rather sad and touching. The Mary I wanted to write about would look rather different from Austen’s character. But could readers ever be convinced to accept her? Once a character is established as fundamentally unlikable, can anything be done to make us change our minds?
In 2015, The Times began following six people age 85 and up, documenting their journeys through a stage of life that is often invisible.
Four were still alive at the start of 2019. Jonas Mekas, 96, began the year at home from the hospital, tired, hoping to finish a film he was making for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem. “Another year,” he said last New Year’s Day. “Hope it will be busy and productive.”
On Jan. 23, he asked his son, Sebastian, to sit him upright in a chair — a preparation, Sebastian said, for his spirit to go forward to the next adventure. He died at the small wooden table where he’d sat with so many friends.
Jonas was the last of the three men in the Times series. Of the three women, two also died in 2019. Both were 95.
One does not read the Maigret novels in expectation of wild revelation or plot twists, but to inhabit the vividly realised world of Parisian streets, dives, bistros and high-class hotels. If the books are sketches, they are the sketches of an old master. But the thread that runs though all the books is Maigret’s inquiries into the psychology of his adversaries, and it is this unfailing humanity that makes the Maigret books truly worth reading.