It sometimes happens that a man at home moves about the house, goes through familiar motions, everyday motions, his expression unguarded, and, suddenly raising his eyes, he notices that the curtains have not been drawn and that people are watching him from outside. The opening of Belle describes a state of being characteristic of a … Continue reading Belle
roman dur
Tropic Moon
Try as he might, he could not account for it, this feeling of depression and foreboding that had taken possession of him. This is the feeling that weighs upon young Frenchman Joseph Timar on his arrival in Libreville, Gabon, to take up a position on a logging concession in the interior of the country. Finding … Continue reading Tropic Moon
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
Uncle Charles
The original title of Uncle Charles is Oncle Charles s’est enfermé – Uncle Charles has locked himself in - and this is exactly what happens at the beginning of the novel: Charles Dupeux returns from work, goes upstairs and barricades himself in the attic. Downstairs, his wife, Laurence, and his three daughters take their evening … Continue reading Uncle Charles
The Reckoning
Jules Malétras is a thoroughly unpleasant man. He is a wealthy, retired businessman, tight-fisted and contemptuous of those around him. In the opening chapter of The Reckoning, he strangles his young mistress, Lulu, because she refuses to undress for him. It is not that he particularly desires to see her naked; rather, he is angered … Continue reading The Reckoning
The Family Lie
As his son lies in bed with diphtheria, a Paris doctor, Edouard Malempin, struggles to remember the details of his own childhood, jotting down his recollections in a school exercise book. Again and again, Malempin reminds us of the unreliable nature of his memory: ‘I’m not sure’; ‘I don’t remember’; ‘There what I remember ends’; … Continue reading The Family Lie
Red Lights
Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, leave New York on Labor Day to drive to Maine to collect their children from summer camp. Steve feels himself ‘going into the tunnel’, an expression he uses privately to describe his desire to go on a drinking binge. Steve suffers from feelings of inadequacy due to the fact … Continue reading Red Lights
The Murderer
Han Kuperus is a respectable doctor in the provincial Dutch town of Sneek. He has received an anonymous note informing him that his wife is having an affair with his friend, Schutter, and, in the opening chapter, he returns early from his weekly trip to Amsterdam and shoots the couple dead on a canal path … Continue reading The Murderer
The Window Over the Way
Adil Bey is the newly-arrived Turkish consul in the dismal Black Sea port of Batum in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s. He does not speak the language, immediately alienates himself from the expatriate clique and is thus dependent on his twenty-year-old secretary, Sonia, for contact with the outside world. Sonia lives with her policeman … Continue reading The Window Over the Way
Graeme Macrae Burnet 