Letter to My Mother No 39

'As you are well aware, we never loved each other in your lifetime. Both of us pretended.'

Simenon explores the complexity of parent child relationships and the bitterness of things left unsaid in this stark, confessional piece.

Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.