The plot echoes Flaubert’s portrait of 19th-century boredom, adultery and doom. Married to divorce Charles Bovery, a furniture restorer and worn-out father of two, Gemma tires of London–a city, she scrawls in her diary, replete with “nauseating middle-class ghettos full of dimmer switches, panic buttons and kids behind burglar bars.” So the Boverys move to Normandy, which, like Charlie himself, first enchants Gemma, then disappoints. Cue for entrance of square-jawed and weak-spined aristocrat Herve, and lots of sex in his chateau, where, enthuses Gemma, “anything wood is riddled with worm… everything faded to elephant’s breath colour. totally stunning!”
The fun is in the details: Simmonds has laser vision for ’90s social mores. She knows that Gemma would serve sea-bass sashimi at a dinner party, that baguettes would cost four francs in Normandy and that Charlie would want to live close enough to England so he could listen to Radio 4. Her sketchbook includes drawings of “British legs” (white, spotty, fat) vs. “French legs” (lean, brown, slim) and a menu Simmonds copied under a restaurant table to use in the book.
Simmonds skewers precisely the society she entertains. (Critics have compared her to William Hogarth, who captured the currents of 18th-century London in bold cartoons.) Growing up on a Berkshire farm, Simmonds pored over cartoons like “Blondie” and “Nancy” she borrowed from Americans at a nearby air base. After a year at the Sorbonne and a degree course at London’s Central School for Art and Design, she began drawing cartoons for The Sun and The Guardian. In the ’70s and ’80s her satirical streak emerged in “The Silent Three,” a cartoon about the left-leaning idealists George and Wendy Weber. What began as a feminist comic on The Guardian’s Women’s page became a must-read for Britain’s middle-class urbanites. The series was a thumbnail sketch of middle-class preoccupations, from angst about serving Chilean reds during the Pinochet years to being open and honest with children about sex.
In 1987 Simmonds started writing children’s books. In one, a girl named Lulu runs amok in a museum with cherubs who jump out of an ersatz Titian. Another Simmonds book, in which a cat name Fred becomes a rock-star, was made into a short film which received a nomination for an Academy Award. The cartoons and books bore the same Simmonds touch: sharp social observations rendered with verbal economy and lavish, witty illustrations. “It’s simply a way of asking questions,” she says. “What are people talking about? What drink is everyone sick of? What shoes are people wearing?” For Simmonds fans, the shock of self-recognition is also a delight.
