When you read two or three Simenon novels in quick succession, the author’s oft-quoted statement that his “big novel is the mosaic of all [his] small novels” takes on greater resonance. Viewed together his romans durs map out of universe of drab, unremarkable lives; of little people going about their business, tortured by petty resentments, … Continue reading The Man with the Little Dog
Paris
The Cat
The premise of The Cat might have come from a Samuel Beckett play. A septuagenarian couple, Emile and Marguerite Bouin pass their days in their Paris apartment waiting for each other to die. They have not spoken to each other for years, instead exchanging unpleasant little notes written on scraps of paper. Emile accuses his … Continue reading The Cat
The Magician
The original title of The Magician was Antoine et Julie. It’s a significant change, shifting the focus from the relationship to the individual, now identified not by name but by profession. But this is very much a novel about a relationship, or rather about two relationships: firstly, that of 55-year-old Antoine to his wife, and, … Continue reading The Magician
One Way Out
In their most passionate moments . . . her body was taught and quivering like a stretched wire, her pupils rigid as a sleepwalkers. One Way Out tells the story of a doomed relationship between Bachelin, a hot-headed young clerk, and Juliette, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a comfortably bourgeois cashier in the provincial town of … Continue reading One Way Out
The Girl with a Squint
The Girl with a Squint is unusual - if not unique - in Simenon in that its central relationship is between two women. The protagonists are Sylvie and Marie (the one with the squint), childhood friends who we first encounter as teenagers in 1922, working the summer season at a seaside pension in Fouras. They … Continue reading The Girl with a Squint
The Girl in His Past
The Girl in His Past opens like a B-movie. A man drives through a rain swept forest, breaks down, finds his way to a country inn, and then, as the locals eavesdrop, telephones the operator: ‘I’d like to speak to the police, Murder Division.’ Alberte Bauche, a twenty-eight-year-old journalist, has killed his employer – and … Continue reading The Girl in His Past
Graeme Macrae Burnet 