Soon after this baggy tale of Belgian boyhood first came out in 1948, Simenon ditched plans for a three-part saga and changed the closing words "End of Volume One" to "The End". Pedigree may be uneven  after 250 pages it abandons what initially seems a key plot line about an anarchist bomber's escape to Paris  but it's always enjoyable, and good to have back in English after Penguin let Robert Baldick's 1962 text go out of print. The main character, Roger, doesn't speak until nearly a third of the way in, the early part of the book being given over to a tender account of his young parents' struggle to make ends meet. By the time his Flemish mother Élise saves enough money to open a flea-ridden boarding house, he's old enough for the novel to settle down to the job of charting his mixed-up adolescence in German-occupied Liège. When the troops leave in 1918, and Roger at last looks ready to put awkward sex, vomit-stained nights out and fashion faux pas behind him, Simenon stops writing.