The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon (tr. Howards Curtis)

Sneaking this in as my contribution to Karen and Simon’s #1940Club, a week-long celebration of books first published in 1940. (You can find more info on the event here.)

The Strangers in the House is one of Simenon’s romans durs – ‘hard’, psychological novels with an existential edge. Like much of this author’s work, Strangers features a crime; however, the mystery and its resolution are not the most important elements here. Instead, Simenon is more concerned with delving into the psyche of his protagonist, Hector Loursat, a reclusive lawyer whose hermit-like existence is disturbed by a shocking event…

Since the departure of his wife, Geneviève, eighteen years ago, Loursat has had little to do with the outside world, including his fellow inhabitants of Moulins, the French town where he lives. Instead, he spends his days reading his vast collection of books while drinking copious quantities of Burgundy, emerging only for a short daily walk and dinner, which he eats in silence with his daughter, Nicole. While father and daughter share a vast, cavernous house, they have minimal contact on a day-to-day basis. In one sense, they are the ‘strangers’ of the novel’s title – an interpretation that seems particularly apt when we learn that Nicole – who was two when Geneviève ran off with her lover – has been raised by Josephine, the family’s truculent cook. 

One night, Loursat is shaken out of his sleepy, Burgundy-fuelled existence when he hears what sounds like a gunshot from one of the other rooms. Emerging from his lair, Loursat makes his way to Nicole’s bedroom in the other wing of the house. While waiting for his daughter to open the door, our protagonist is convinced he sees a figure passing down the staircase the end of the corridor – a young man in a beige raincoat, as far as he can tell. The plot thickens when father and daughter make their way to the floor above, where they find a dead man lying in one of the beds. Loursat, for his part, knows nothing of this stranger who has been shot in the chest – his identity and reason for being in the house are a complete mystery to him, as are the details of the evening’s events. Moreover, Nicole also claims to have no knowledge of the victim or the circumstances surrounding his death.

However, as more details begin to emerge, it becomes clear that Loursat has little understanding of what his daughter has been getting up to in the other wing at night. It turns out that Nicole has fallen in with a gang of local boys who spend their evenings stealing various items as dares and partying in the house – all unbeknownst to Loursat, who is in effect something of a stranger in his own home. Nevertheless, when Nicole’s boyfriend, Émile, is accused of the murder, Loursat is convinced of the boy’s innocence and agrees to act as his lawyer for the trial.

Something Simenon does particularly well here is to show us how these events prompt Loursat to re-examine his reclusive life. Why has he withdrawn from society for the past eighteen years, preferring instead to live a life of near-total isolation like a primitive, unkempt bear? Consequently, there is a reawakening of sorts as the lawyer is forced to re-engage with the outside world while he investigates the case.

In his street, passing all the big houses that were similar to his, it struck him that he [Loursat] hated them, them and their occupants, just as he hated his sister, and Dossin, and Rogissart and his wife, and Ducup and the deputy prosecutor, all these people who hadn’t done him any harm but were on the other side of the barricade, which would have been his side if his wife hadn’t run off with a man named Bernard, if he hadn’t spent eighteen years shut up in his study and if he hadn’t just discovered a bustling life he’d never thought about, a life superimposed on the other life, the official life of the town… (p. 97)

In some respects, Loursat’s interests in philosophy and other related subjects enable him to understand the psychology and behavioural traits of the boys in Nicole’s gang – any one of whom could have committed the murder instead of Émile.

While Simenon’s romans durs are usually characterised by their bleak, ominous mood, Strangers feels somewhat different in tone. There are some wonderful touches of black comedy here as Loursat bristles at the thought of the town’s bourgeois residents – from the respectable Public Prosecutor, Rogissart, to his idiotic brother-in-law, Dossin, a man Loursat clearly disdains.

He wondered why he resented them [the Dossins] so much, and couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. True, he despised them for their vanity, for this townhouse they had built that had become their reason for being. As far as he was, concerned, Dossin, with his moustache that always smelt of liqueurs or young women, was the epitome of the happy idiot. (p. 80)

Moreover, Loursat is equally dismissive of his sister, Marthe (Dossin’s wife), whom he resents for ‘her constant mournfulness’ and ‘flabby, half-hearted elegance’, not to mention her desire for life’s materialistic trappings. In a further twist of fate, the Dossin’s sickly son, Edmond (Loursat’s nephew), is also embroiled in the murder investigation due to his influence over the other boys in the gang.  

While the mystery behind the murder is finally solved, Strangers does not conform to the typical pattern of an investigative novel. There is little emphasis on gathering clues or delving into the perpetrator’s motives. Instead, we have an intriguing character study of a prickly, isolated man, prompted to make the transition from merely existing to actually participating, particularly in his daughter’s life.

As ever with Simenon, the atmosphere is suitably vivid, evoking images of rainy, wind-swept streets and cold, damp exteriors. No wonder Loursat spends so much time in his grubby, book-lined den, complete with his trusty stove and three bottles of Burgundy each day, especially when the weather seems unremittingly grim.

He could hear the raindrops and, occasionally, the squeak of a shutter that hadn’t been properly shut; the wind was rising and sudden gusts swept through the streets. He could also hear, with the clarity of a metronome, the ticking of his gold stopwatch in his waistcoat pocket. (p. 10)

In summary then, The Strangers in the House, is a most enjoyable Simenon – not as bleak as some of his other romans durs, but certainly gritty enough to fit the bill!

The Blue Room by Georges Simenon (1964, tr. Linda Coverdale, 2015)

I have written before about Georges Simenon, the prolific Belgian writer with a talent for illuminating the dark side of the human psyche with all its inherent complexities. This is another of his romans durs or ‘hard’, psychological novels. An intoxicating tale of passion and obsession in which the past and present are blended together to great effect – it might just be my favourite Simenon to date.

As the novella opens, we are dropped into a conversation between two lovers, Tony and Andrée, cloistered together in a hotel room in Triant, a small-town community in rural France. It is clear that the couple have just finished making love, a violent, passionate ritual that occurs in secret each month – always at the same hotel (owned by Tony’s brother), always in the blue room of the novella’s title.

Both parties are married but not to one another. Tony – a handsome, virile self-made man who owns an agricultural machinery business – is married to Gisèle, the perfect wife and mother to the couple’s daughter, Marianne. Andrée, on the other hand, is a more complex character than her lover. A passionate, manipulative woman at heart, she is married to Nicolas, a wealthy man of failing health whose formidable mother owns the local grocery store.

As the pair relax after their lovemaking, Andrée begins to ask Tony a series of seemingly innocent questions about his feelings for her, speculating about the future as one might do in this type of situation. However, little does Tony know of the significance of this conversation or the importance Andrée chooses to attach to Tony’s answers in the dreamlike atmosphere of the moment. As we soon learn, it is a scene that Tony must revisit in his mind time and time again as the story unfolds…

[Andrée:] ‘Could you spend your whole life with me?’

He had hardly noticed her words; they were like the images and odours all around him. How could he have guessed that this scene was something he would relive ten times, twenty times and more – and every time in a different frame of mind, from a different angle? (p.5)

[…]

[Andrée] ‘Would you like to spend your whole life with me?’

[Tony] ‘Sure.’

He had said that, he did not deny it. He was the one who had reported that conversation to the magistrate. But the important thing was his tone of voice. He was just talking, without meaning anything by it. It wasn’t real. In the blue room, nothing was real. Or rather, its reality was of a different nature, incomprehensible anywhere else. (p.64)

From a very early stage in the novella (p. 5), it becomes abundantly clear that in the present moment, Tony is being questioned concerning an investigation linked to his liaison with Andrée. The opening scene at the hotel has already happened; it is in the past, and Tony is being forced to revisit it through a series of interrogations by magistrates, psychologists and other members of the judicial team.

One of the most compelling things about this novella is the way Simenon seamlessly blends elements of the present-day investigations and recollections of past events in a way that makes the overall narrative feel so compelling. The focus here is very much on the psychological – in other words, Tony’s state of mind as he worries away at each development and conversation, repeatedly turning them over in his mind. As a consequence, the interrogations never feel in the least bit dry as they flow naturally within the framework of the story, sketching the details of the characters’ motivations and movements on the days in question.

What starts as a passionate, sensual novella becomes increasingly tense as the narrative unfolds. Simenon is adept at revealing just the right amount of information at each stage – enough to keep the reader guessing about the exact nature of the crime(s) and Tony’s involvement in crucial events virtually to the very end.

This is a very cleverly constructed story with complex, interesting characters at its heart. Andrée is a particularly intriguing individual. Considered aloof and distant by Nicolas in the past – he has known her since childhood – she is, in fact, forceful and manipulative at heart. It was Andrée who initiated the affair with Tony during a chance meeting by the roadside one evening the previous year.

In fact, it was she who had possessed him, and her eyes had gleamed with as much triumph as passion. (p. 22)

In addition to the tension and passion, the atmosphere of village life in rural France is also beautifully evoked; from the sights and landmarks of the countryside to the sounds outside the window during the couple’s illicit trysts at the hotel. There are echoes of another Simenon, too – The Krull House, which focuses on a community’s resentment of immigrants and the havoc this can wreak. Tony is considered something of an outsider in the community; his parents having come from Italy to settle in the region. In his youth, Tony left the village to find employment elsewhere, only to return ten years later to set up his business in the locality. Both of these points work against him in the eyes of the community.

In summary, this is a taut, uncompromising novella on the dangers of seemingly casual affairs. An utterly compelling book that grips the reader from its intriguing opening chapter. I loved it – very highly recommended indeed.

The Blue Room is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.

The Krull House by Georges Simenon (tr. Howard Curtis)

For a book first published in 1939, The Krull House remains remarkably relevant to the Europe of today, frighteningly so. In this brilliant, tightly-wound novel, Simenon skilfully illustrates the destructive effect that suspicions and prejudices against outsiders can have on an insular community – all executed in the author’s characteristically economical prose.

The story focuses on the Krull family who live in a modest house on the edge of a rural French town, just by the lock of a canal. Cornelius Krull, the father of the family, was born in Germany but has spent most of his adult life in France, having settled in the town several years earlier following a period of wandering. In spite of his time in France, Cornelius has never learned to speak French, choosing instead to communicate in an odd dialect only his immediate family can understand.

While Cornelius spends most his days weaving baskets in the adjoining workshop, his wife, Maria runs the Krull’s grocery and bar, aided in this capacity by her eldest daughter, Anna. Also residing at the house are the Krull’s other children, twenty-five-year-old Joseph, a shy, nervous boy who is studying to be a doctor, and seventeen-year-old Liesbeth, a keen pianist.

Even though the Krulls have lived in the area for several years, they have struggled to integrate and are considered by the locals to be rather dubious outsiders. The French community shun the Krull’s shop-cum-bar, preferring instead to frequent other establishments, typically those run by fellow natives or naturalised immigrants such as the Schoofs. (While the Schoofs are also German by origin, many of the locals believe them to be Dutch on account of their name.) Consequently, the Krulls must survive on business from passing travellers – mostly bargees and the runners who serve them.

Into this rather delicate environment comes Cornelius’ nephew, Hans, who arrives seeking shelter, supposedly from the prevailing political environment in Germany. In contrast to the ‘French’ Krulls, Hans is a ‘pure’ Krull – loud, cocky and supremely self-confident. Virtually from the start, The Krull family are suspicious of Hans – and rightly so. It’s not long before the new arrival reveals himself to be a liar and a libertine, preying on the vulnerable Liesbeth at the earliest opportunity and extorting money from the Schoofs under false pretences. Furthermore, Hans refuses to keep quiet about his German heritage, drawing attention to it as he makes his mark on the community.

In his sharpness, Hans soon realises how the French Krulls are perceived by the locals, a situation that strikes him as somewhat ironic given their length of tenure in the town. In some respects, Hans believes the Krulls have tried too hard or too little to integrate, thereby failing to strike a more acceptable middle-ground.

Hans laughed, realizing how strange it was for the Krull family to be making their way through the crowd attending the fair. Not only had they just come out of a Protestant church rather than a Catholic one, not only did Uncle Cornelius barely speak French, but everything about them, even Joseph’s resigned smile, was alien to the things that surrounded them. (p. 20, Penguin)

Hans’ arrival acts as a catalyst, stirring up the undercurrents of tension within the town to dramatic effect.

When the body of a young woman is found washed up in the canal, the shadow of suspicion soon falls on the Krulls, prompting unrest within the community as malicious rumours begin to spread. The girl was assaulted and strangled, murdered on a night when some of the Krulls had been out and about in the neighbourhood. Even though Joseph may not have been directly involved in the girl’s murder, he had been seen following her on a number of occasions – not only on the evening in question but at other times too. In his naivety and inexperience with others, women in particular, Joseph has developed a habit of skulking about at night, spying on young lovers to observe their rituals and behaviours, hoping against hope to establish a connection.

All too soon, the situation escalates, and unrest turns into hostility. A pushy friend of the victim makes her presence felt at the Krull’s, pointing at the house and making comments to her friends.

There she was, just opposite the house, on the other side of the street, accompanied by two girls and a young man who all worked in the same shoe shop. She was making no attempt to pass unnoticed, or to pretend to be busy with something else. On the contrary! She was gesticulating, pointing at the house, then at one of the upstairs windows, nobody was quite sure why.

Because from the kitchen, they couldn’t hear what she was saying. They could only see. (p. 90)

Stones are thrown at the Krull’s windows; hateful slurs are painted on the shop’s shutters; a dead cat is found outside the door. Ultimately, a violent mob descends on the family’s property, pushing back against the police as the animosity spirals out of control.

Amid all the chaos, Liesbeth reveals her fears to Hans, recounting some of the prejudices the family has had to face over the years. While Hans lacks any sense of decency and moral fibre, he does share the Krulls status as a foreigner, a position which gives him some understanding of how it feels to be shunned by a community.

[Liesbeth:] ‘People have been so awful to us!’

[Hans:] ‘Why?’

‘Because of everything! Because we’re foreigners! At school, the children called me the Kraut. and the teacher would say to me in front of the whole class: “Mademoiselle, when one receives a country’s hospitality, one has to double the duty to behave well.” […]

‘Anna was even less lucky. She was almost engaged to a very respectable young man, the son of the justice of the peace who owns the house with the two balconies opposite the church of Saint-Léonard. When his father found out, he sent his son away to continue his studies in Montpellier and swore that he would disown him if he married my sister…What can we do? Mother never hits back. She’s friendly to everyone. But I know it upsets her when neighbours, people like the Morins, who live just next door, prefer to put their hats on and go shopping somewhere else.’ (pp. 104-105)

As far as Aunt Maria sees it, The Krull’s only hope is for Hans to leave the district; if the interloper disappears, surely the police will believe he is the murderer, leaving the rest of the family free from suspicion? However, things are not quite that straightforward in reality – something the Krulls are about to discover all too painfully.

The Krull House is a short novel, but an extremely powerful one. Simenon really captures the sense of unease that can develop in a close-knit community; the way difference often leads to resentment and mistrust; how migrants may be made to play the scapegoat when things go wrong. There is a strong sense of dread running through the narrative, a feeling that only escalates as the novel reaches its devastating conclusion.

Eighty years on, this feels like a timely and prescient read, a vital story for our troubling times. Very highly recommended – not just for fans of Simenon, but for anyone interested in societal issues too.

The Krull House is published by Penguin Books; personal copy.

Red Lights by Georges Simenon (tr. Norman Denny)

What prompts a seemingly ordinary conventional man to embark upon a path of self-destruction, to the exclusion of those closest to him, until his actions end in near-inevitable catastrophe? This is the theme Simenon mines in his 1955 novella Red Lights. Like Three Bedrooms in Manhattan and The Widow (which I read last year), Red Lights is another of this author’s romans durs, the ‘hard’ novels of which he was particularly proud. It is a tight, claustrophobic read, one that would suit lovers of vintage noir or crime fiction with a strong psychological edge.

The book opens on the Friday evening of the Labor Day weekend; the time is the early 1950s. Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, are preparing to drive from their home in Long Island to Maine, New England to pick up their children from summer camp. It is clear from the outset that there are tensions in this marriage, some of which are bubbling just under the surface while others remain repressed somewhere in Steve’s psyche. Before the couple leave for Maine, Steve sneaks out for a quick drink under the pretext of filling up the car with gas. There is a sense that Nancy knows what he is getting up to, but she declines to say anything before they set off on their trip. On the road, the couple get caught in a storm and heavy traffic, the latter an inevitable development given the forty-five million motorists predicted to be driving at some point over the holiday weekend. Consequently, the tension starts to build…

He was not shaken by the accident reports, not alarmed. What got on his nerves was the incessant hum of wheels on either side of him, the headlights rushing to meet him every hundred yards, and also the sensation of being caught in a tide, with no way of escaping either to right or to left, or even of driving more slowly, because his mirror showed a triple string of lights following bumper-to-bumper behind him. (p. 13)

Desperate for another drink, Steve pulls over at a roadside bar under the guise of needing the men’s room while Nancy stays in the car. Back at the wheel after a swift double, Steve takes a wrong turn, gets frustrated as a result and seems keen to start a quarrel. Nancy, for her part, remains calm and composed. She is a practical, level-headed woman, self-confident and efficient; but as far as Steve sees it, Nancy has to be right about everything.

She didn’t order him about, actually, but she arranged their life in her own way, as though it were the natural thing to do. He was wrong. He knew he was wrong. Whenever he had had a drink or two he saw her differently, becoming annoyed by things that ordinarily he took for granted. (p. 10)

Things take a turn for the worse when Steve decides to stop at another bar, leaving Nancy by herself in the car for the second time – this despite the fact that she has threatened to continue the journey to Maine without him if he goes in. As a consequence, Steve takes the ignition key with him just to spite her. When he returns to the car some fifteen minutes later, Steve finds a note from Nancy to say she is going on ahead by bus. After a frantic attempt to intercept his wife on the Greyhound heading toward Providence, he gets lost again, thereby abandoning all plans to catch up with the bus in the process.

By now, Steve is tanked and very annoyed with Nancy, sick of having to play by her rules all the time. In this heightened state of mind, he goes ‘into the tunnel’, an intense mental fugue he experiences every now and again, a mood characterised by feelings of solitude, frustration and alienation.

He called it “going into the tunnel,” an expression of his own, for his private use, which he never used in talking to anyone else, least of all to his wife. He knew exactly what it meant, and what it was like to be in the tunnel; yet, curiously, when he was there he never allowed himself to admit the fact, except for occasional brief instants, and always too late. As for determining the precise moment when he entered it, he had often tried to do this afterwards, but never with success. (p. 5)

Stopping at yet another bar, Steve latches on to a solitary drinker, offloading to him about Nancy and women in general. In the midst of his drunken fugue state, Steve is keen to demonstrate that he is a real man, someone who know how to live life ‘off the tracks’, unconstrained by the woman of the household and the conventions of society. Unfortunately for Steve, his uncommunicative drinking partner turns out to be Sid Halligan, a dangerous criminal on the run following a breakout from Sing Sing Penitentiary. Somehow or other, Halligan ends up in Steve’s car, a development which leads our protagonist into very dangerous territory. I’ll leave it there with the plot, save to say that Halligan’s appearance on the scene has lasting consequences for both Steve and Nancy.

Red Lights is a very gripping piece of noir, harrowing and brutal in its sensibility. Simenon maintains an atmosphere of simmering tension throughout, which gives the story the feel of a white-knuckle ride as Steve attempts to deal with his demons both internal and external. In many respects, it reads like a cross between a classic James M. Cain noir (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and a Richard Yates novel – something like Disturbing the Peace, a book which features an alcoholic protagonist, a rather tragic figure who seems powerless to prevent his own descent into a self-destructive state of despair. As the narrative of Red Lights unfolds, we learn a little more about the nature of Steve’s day-to-day life with Nancy. As the one left to take care of the children for an hour or two after work, Steve clearly feels somewhat inferior to Nancy, particularly considering her importance to her prestigious employers. It is this underlying sense of frustration, together with an annoyance at having to constantly win his wife’s approval, which catalyses Steve’s abusive behaviour on this fateful night.

Because when Bonnie and Dan weren’t in camp, that is to say, during the greater part of the year, it was not Nancy who got home early to look after them; it was he. Because in her office she was a person of importance, the right hand of Mr. Schwartz, head of the firm of Schwartz & Taylor, who came between ten and eleven in the morning and had a business lunch nearly every day, after which he worked till six or seven in the evening.

[…]

On the stroke of five he, Steve, was free. He could make a dash for the Lexington Avenue subway station, get wedged in the crush, and at Brooklyn, sprint for the bus that stopped at the end of their lot.

Altogether it didn’t take more than three quarters of an hour, and he would find Ida, the coloured girl who minded the children when they got back from school, with her hat on already. Her time must be valuable too. Everybody’s time was valuable. Everybody’s except his own… (pp. 29-30)

The more I think about this novella, the more compelling it feels in spite of the brutality – this is not a book for the sensitive or fainthearted. My only hesitation relates to the plausibility of the path to redemption sketched out towards the end of the story, something which is difficult to discuss without revealing spoilers. Nevertheless, this is a fairly minor reservation. There is a depth/intensity to the various emotions explored here – not only during the night itself but in the hours that follow. The sense of place feels incredibly authentic too. Simenon perfectly captures the seedy atmosphere and sense of agitation in the roadside bars, the way the regulars remain watchful, sizing up any outsiders in the process.

All in all, this is a very affecting noir. Not always a comfortable read, but a gripping one for sure.

Red Lights is published by NYRB Classics; personal copy.

The Widow by Georges Simenon (tr. John Petrie)

Back in April 2015 I read Simenon’s Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, a fictionalised account of the author’s impassioned love affair with Denise Ouimet, a woman he met in Manhattan in 1945. Even though Three Bedrooms was somewhat atypical of Simenon’s work, it gave me a taste for his romans durs (or ‘hard’ psychological novels). With that in mind, I’ve been looking forward to trying another ever since.

First published in 1942, The Widow is one of the few books by Simenon to feature a strong woman at the heart of its narrative. The woman in question is Tati Couderc, a forty-five-year-old widowed peasant who runs a farm close to St. Amand in the Bourbonnais region of France. Having outlived her husband, she now shares the farmhouse with her father-in-law and owner of the farm, old Couderc. Tati is unattractive, unkempt and somewhat rough around the edges, but she is also sharp and as tough as old boots.

As the novel opens, Tati is taking the bus home from market when a young drifter, Jean, boards the vehicle. Unlike the other passengers on the bus, Tati sees something different in Jean, something the others simply do not notice. She sees that he has nothing on him, no ties and no obvious direction either. It’s as if she figures him out in an instant.

…but all the same she did not take her eyes off him, and she took note of everything—his stubbly cheeks, his pale unseeing eyes, his gray suit, worn yet having a touch of ease about it, his thin shoes. A man who could walk noiselessly and spring like a cat. And who, after the seven francs fifty he had given to the driver in exchange for a blue ticket, probably had no money left in his pockets. […]

Widow Couderc too hugged a secret smile. The man blinked slightly. It was rather as if, in the midst of all these old women with their nodding heads, the two had recognized each other. (pgs. 6-7, NYRB Classics)

When Tati gets off the bus laden with packages, Jean follows shortly afterwards and gives her a hand carrying everything back to the farm. Keen to take possession of this young man, Tati offers him some work on the farm – in any case she needs a hand running the place as her father-in-law is old, deaf and a little senile. When Jean reveals that he has just been released from prison for the murder of a man, Tati does not seem in the least surprised – ‘It was as if she had guessed it already.’  With nothing else on the horizon, Jean falls in with the plan and promptly beds down in the loft.

Her eyes were eating him up. She was taking possession of him. She wasn’t afraid. She wanted him to understand that she wasn’t afraid of him. (pgs. 14-15)

And always that little glance in which he could read satisfaction, even a kind of promise, but a slight reservation as well. She was not distrustful. Only, she still needed to watch him for a time. (pg. 23)

A few days later Jean and Tati end up in bed together. Even so, there is no real passion or romance here – it’s all much more functional than that. And while Tati is happy to have sex with Jean, she must also service old Couderc’s sexual needs every now and again just to keep him sweet.

As the story progresses, two developments come together to create a sense of tension and conflict in the narrative. The first of these stems from the introduction of old Couderc’s daughters into the mix. Daughter number one, Françoise, lives next door to the farm; as such she is perfectly positioned to keep watch on developments when Jean arrives on the scene. However, the real brains of the outfit is daughter number two, Amélie, who, on hearing about Jean’s past, descends on the farmhouse with her husband and young son in tow. Both daughters are deeply resentful of Tati’s position on the farm—they have never liked her ever since she arrived as a young servant at the age of fourteen. With a murderer now living in their midst, the daughters are worried that Tati might be plotting to do away with old Couderc. If truth be told, they would like nothing more than to find a means of evicting the widow; after all, their inheritance might be at stake. Here’s Amélie as she confronts Tati.

“You see, I know what you’re up to. It’s no accident that this man’s here. One fine morning you’ll get Father—God knows how—to sign a paper. Then he’ll have to be disposed of before he can change his mind. Go on, admit it! Admit that from the first day you stepped in here, when we were still only kids, you decided you would take over. Our poor brother was properly fooled. You were already as perverted as could be. […]” (pg. 48)

The second development involves Françoise’s daughter, Félicie, an alluring sixteen-year-old who lives with her parents in the house next door. Jean is clearly attracted to Félicie as he watches her playing with her baby in the grass. (There is no sign of a husband or a father of the child on the scene.) At first, Félicie keeps her distance from Jean (teasing him, perhaps), but as the narrative progresses her attitude softens, and she moves a little closer.

As she had bidden him good night, she would bid him good morning. She was not altogether tamed yet, but she was beginning to trace ever-narrowing circles around him. (pg 107)

From the very first chapter, it is plainly obvious that Tati has taken a deep dislike to Félicie, whom she considers ‘a little slut’ – in all honesty, she is jealous of the young girl. Concerned that something might be brewing between Jean and Félicie, Tati insists on keeping a close eye on developments. She watches Jean like a hawk, questioning him on his movements and interactions as he goes about his work on the farm. Jean, on the other hand, can think of little else but the prospect of Félicie. He carries her image in his mind: the fullness of her lip, the curve of her body as she carries the baby on her arm…

That’s about as much as I’m going to reveal about the plot, save to say that circumstances and events conspire to force a dramatic denouement. This is a first-rate slice of noir from Simenon, just as dark and disturbing as its cover suggests. The style is spare yet very effective with the author carefully modulating the tension as the story unfolds. There is a palpable sense of foreboding from a fairly early stage in the narrative and if anything this feeling only grows as we move closer to the final chapters. Memories of Jean’s trial for murder some five years earlier echo and reverberate through the novella, and we learn a little more about the young man’s backstory along the way.

In his excellent introduction to the NYRB Classics edition, Paul Theroux compares and contrasts The Widow with another novella published in France in 1942, Camus’ L’Étranger (The Outsider/The Stranger). Interestingly, the French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, André Gide considered The Widow to be the superior book. Each of these novellas features a remorseless young man cast adrift from society. In Simenon’s work there is a sense that Jean operates in a bit of a vacuum—none of his actions seem to hold any real weight or significance. There are other similarities too including the focus on bright sunlight, a motif that runs through The Widow. I’ll finish with a couple of quotes to illustrate this point. The second of these also gives a brief feel for Simenon’s descriptions of the Bourbonnais countryside, the tranquil environment that forms the backdrop to this powerful story of greed, resentment, jealousy and desire.

Sunrays as sharp as the beams from a searchlight slanted in through the window with its small panes. (pg. 31)

The grass was a dark green, the water almost black. In contrast, the newborn foliage of the chestnuts was tender and the sunshine splashed it with large daubs of gold. (pg. 29)

For other perspectives on this book, click here for reviews by Guy and Jose.

The Widow is published by NYRB Classics. Source: personal copy.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon (review)

First published in 1946, Simenon’s Three Bedrooms in Manhattan features a forty-eight-year-old down-and-out actor named François Combe. François has come to Manhattan to escape the scrutiny of the Paris milieu following his wife’s decision to leave him for a much younger (and less talented) actor.

One night, unable to sleep, he leaves his apartment at 3am and goes to a bar where he meets a woman named Kay. Somehow Kay instinctively knows that François is French, and she strikes up a conversation with him. Even though he finds her habits and slow movements rather annoying, François is strangely drawn to Kay. It’s as if he sees her as a reflection of himself, another wounded soul in a lonely city. He can sense it in her voice:

A low voice that made you think of a scar that hadn’t healed, of a hurt that lingers beneath consciousness, soft and familiar, deep inside. (pg 8)

They have a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes and leave the bar together at 5am. After drifting through the sidewalks for a couple of hours, they end up taking a room at a shabby hotel. (Kay has been locked out of the apartment she shared with a girlfriend and François doesn’t want to take her to his place, not yet). When François wakes up the next day, even though he has known Kay for less than 24 hours, he is a little fearful of the thought of losing her. Perhaps he is also afraid of losing something of himself:

Strange, they’d gone to sleep in this room as the night ended and woken up again as the night began. He was almost afraid to leave it – frightened of forgetting some part of himself there that he might never be able to find again. (pg.16)

What follows is a portrayal of François and Kay’s relationship as it develops over the course of a few weeks. It’s a connection based on loneliness and abandonment. We follow the couple as they drift around the sidewalks of the city: they move from bar to bar; they play the same song on the jukebox; they drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. The novel’s title refers to the three bedrooms the couple visit as their relationship continues: first the hotel room, then François’ apartment and finally Kay’s room. As Kay sees the actor’s apartment for the first time, the depth of his solitude is painfully apparent:

The still-lighted lamp greeted them. The room was quiet, and the quietness was almost spectral. He had thought it would look sordid, but it was tragic, that was all, full of the tragedy of loneliness and abandonment. (pg. 45)

Kay has been around the block a few times – her face looks a little tired and worn for a woman in her early thirties. She claims to have been married to a Hungarian Count, a relationship that ended when she ran away following months of abuse. As the story unravels, it becomes clear that there is a possessive, almost obsessive, side to François’ character. He harbours feelings of jealously about the men in Kay’s past, men he has never met and probably shouldn’t be worrying about. He suspects her of lying to him. At times he is tender towards Kay; on one or two occasions, however, he is cold and abusive:

He watched her take her clothes off, and he remained cold. Yes, he could remain cold to her. She wasn’t beautiful or irresistible, as she thought she was. Her body, like her face was marked by life.

And now, thinking about her, he felt himself carried away by anger, by a need to wipe out everything, to consume everything, to possess everything. (pg. 37)

This is a strange story, quite dreamlike and hypnotic. There is a sense that François and Kay are existing outside of a reality, a world where time seems to expand and contract. Things that happened only moments earlier seem distant and far away. By day three of their relationship, it feels as if they have been together for several years.

In her introduction to Three Bedrooms, Joyce Carol Oates states that the novel is a fictionalised account of Simenon’s impassioned love affair with Denise Ouimet, a woman he met in Manhattan in 1945. It’s one of the reasons why I found this novel quite intriguing. I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favourite reads of the year, but something about this couple’s story got under my skin. François and Kay are two people who need each other. They cling desperately together and they can’t help but bruise one another in the process.

The writing is spare but affecting. The earlier quotes should give you a feel for the style, but here’s another example, a short quote from a passage where François is trying to figure Kay out:

She seemed to be seeking out the despair of others, as if she wanted to rub against it, to wear it down before it could pierce her. (pg. 43)

Simenon’s descriptions of Manhattan are wonderfully atmospheric. This is a dark and melancholy place, the New York of brooding streets and seedy bars:

Two wide streets, almost deserted, with garlands of luminous globes running down the sidewalks.

On the corner, its high windows lit violently, aggressively, with boastful vulgarity, was a sort of long glass cage where people could be seen as dark smudges and where he went in just so as not to be alone. (pg. 6)

Simenon’s description of the Greenwich Village bar in which François meets Kay reminded me of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (a painting thought to have been inspired by a Greenwich diner).

I’ll end with a short quote on the atmosphere in the bar, one that conveys a sense of loneliness in the city:

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn’t go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference. (pg. 6)

Guy at His Futile Preoccupations has also reviewed this novel (along with several other romans durs by Simenon).

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (tr. by Marc Romano and Lawrence G. Blochman) is published in the UK by NYRB Classics. Source: personal copy. Book 19/20 in my #TBR20.