The Widow
by Georges Simenon
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 34)
Read in April, 2008
Someone dies in all the books I've recently read... suicide, murder, auto accident, disease. What's going on? Spring is coming; there are tulips and daffodils in the vacant lot next to my building. I even bought nice, bright new bed clothes. At night I crawl beneath robin's egg blue and lavender bed dressings- and then I open whatever book it is I am reading and I find myself in dark, shadowy, existential terrain- tragedy lurks beneath the craggy moldy surroundings. I'd like to think it is ...more
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This book appeared the same year as Camus' L'Etranger--and Andre Gide wrote that Simenon's is the better book. Camus seems like a Romantic alongside the "romans durs" (hard novels) of Simenon's vision. An inexorable energy and direction seize Simenon's characters, things which without any seeming reason suddenly take hold of them and propel them to make a series of decisions which have only their own interior "logic." A person's inner life and being, previously unknown to th...more
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Read in November, 2008
Like many of Simenon's "hard novels" The Widow drops its main character into a trap devised by the author, a dead-end situation from which the only escape is murder and self-destruction. Both André Gide and Paul Theroux (who wrote the introduction to this edition) make a point of comparing Simenon with Albert Camus. Simenon was far more successful than Camus, but never he garnered critical acclaim and he resented it. When Camus won the Nobel in 1957, Simenon was outraged: "...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommended to Amy by:
Nora
Jean has just been released from prison, when Tati (the widow) offers him a place to stay in exchange for doing work on her small farm. Tati lives with her father-in-law and suffers constant harassment from her dead husband's family who want to take over her house. She was originally the servant of the house when the son of the family impregnated and then had to marry her.
Jean and Tati share a bond as outcasts and Tati doesn't mind putting out for the men of the house. She develops quite a ...more
Jean and Tati share a bond as outcasts and Tati doesn't mind putting out for the men of the house. She develops quite a ...more
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Read in May, 2008
The Widow is an extraordinary little novel. Written in 1940 and published in 1942, it is a dark and intense gem. Like the very best Hitchcock movies, this novel conveys a sense of inevitability, tragedy waiting to happen.
The introduction by Paul Theroux mentions that The Widow was published in the same year as The Stranger by Albert Camus. The Stranger went on to become part of the modern canon; The Widow has been mostly ignored or forgotten. At the time of publication, Andre Gide tho...more
The introduction by Paul Theroux mentions that The Widow was published in the same year as The Stranger by Albert Camus. The Stranger went on to become part of the modern canon; The Widow has been mostly ignored or forgotten. At the time of publication, Andre Gide tho...more
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It's definitely an odd coincidence that The Widow was published the same year as The Stranger because they are strikingly similar in tone, theme, subject matter, and style. I know that Camus was definitely influenced by James Cain and I would guess that Simenon is also. And although he adopts the same type of flat narrative style, like Camus, Simenon lacks the biting humanity that I love in Cain's work. Without that the book lacks a certain drive and the big climactic ending was less than believ...more
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Read in April, 2008
I couldn't put this book down. Simenon is fast becoming a guilty, guilty pleasure and I'm ever more thankful for his frightening prolificness (nearly 400 novels, about 120 or so romans durs).
"The Widow," published in the same year as Camus' "The Stranger," was, for me, an infinitely more pleasurable read that eloquently espoused a similar existential position, without the self conscious styling that weighs the latter down.
"The Widow," published in the same year as Camus' "The Stranger," was, for me, an infinitely more pleasurable read that eloquently espoused a similar existential position, without the self conscious styling that weighs the latter down.
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