Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2011), Paperback, 240 pages
Description
For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, this model family man meets Martine, and it is time for the sleeper to awake.
User reviews
LibraryThing member William345
Epistolary. First person. Dr. Alavoine, recently convicted for murder, is writing to M. Coméliau, the Examining Magistrate in his recent murder trial. The convict believes that during discovery he established some sort of connection with the judge. For many weeks the two men and their lawyers sat
Dr Alavoine and the village setting in which he practices are meant to evoke thoughts of Charles Bovary. I wouldn't pursue this idea if his given name weren’t in fact also Charles. But this is a very libertine Charles. He screws any female who walks. He kills his first wife with his sexual attentions, so intent is he upon siring the traditional son and heir. Jeanne, the wife, delivers a large girl as if to spite him, though she is in fact quite docile; then she dies. Then the rare thing happens. The woman who will soon be Dr. Alavoine’s second wife, Armande, who possesses truly Madame Bovary-like beauty, waltzes into his life. She is without the flaws of her literary double. In fact, the woman is a wonder. But Charles can only think of women as either whores or sheep. How could he possibly think himself equal to such an amazing woman. He can’t. It is he who's submissive to Armande. This arrangement represents a profound humiliation for him.
His life comes to seem strange. He feels detached, as if he were watching a movie with himself in a minor role. The kindness of neighbors and colleagues, his high standing in the community -- all this leaves him in disbelief. Eventually his low self-esteem blossoms into a grander alienation. He descends into a kind of dissociative state. He sees himself as hungry, but he doesn’t know for what. Certainly it isn’t the comfortable existence at the side of this exquisite woman. He decides to be unfaithful to Armande and succeeds with a fat sleazy hooker who appalls even him.
Then on a professional trip to Nantes he meets Martine. He flips for her. She is submissive--the only sort of woman he can feel superior to. But how does this lead to murder? Martine we learn is heading to a meeting with a well-known rake in La Roche-sur-Yon, where Charles lives and practices. There's no way she can work for that lush, that reprobate, Charles thinks. He takes Martine home to his wife, explaining that she is a charge sent to him by a colleague. Martine moves into the spare room. Armande welcomes her and helps her find a flat. It's all Charles can do to stay sane when at home in his surgery seeing patients. For having Martine in the house with his wife means not having Martine.
Finally, she moves out and Charles goes to see her where she shares the home of a widow. He is the sort of man who gets jealous of a woman's past liaisons. And now that she is out of his home, out of his control, he explodes with rage. Under duress he coerces a confession of dubious accuracy from her about her past. The only way to cleanse her of this past, of course, is to kill her. This will be her deliverance.
Its not hard to see, coming from the home he did, how Charles has missed a crucial part his development. He is incapable of having an adult relationship, but must seek out a barfly half his age to fall head over heels in love with. So when the pangs of love do finally come, he is unfamiliar with them and lacks the emotional maturity to master his primitive jealousies. He begins to lay out his rationale for murder. Certainly, he believes in the distinctions he makes, but to the reader they are gibberish, madness. He’s around the bend, has been for some time, and his attempts to reconstruct, to justify the murder are pathetic, futile, meaningless.
He possesses no ability to forgive Martine much less to forget her past. His god-like attitude is 'why hasn’t this woman better prepared herself for my inevitable arrival?' He takes her failure in this regard as a personal insult. Why has she been so sleazy? Why has she fucked so many men? He reminded me here for a moment of the crazed Eric Roberts character in the film Star 80. As for Martine, from her we no longer hear a peep. She has been subsumed by Charles’s crazy scheming. He is constantly on the look out for “the Other”; that is to say, her previous libertine character. He is determined to beat any trace of it out of her. Any reminder of that previous life — he beats her senseless. Nor is she allowed to show fear.
I came to hate Charles. He is without a single sympathetic shard to his character. An utter dread builds in the reader at the prospect of what he might do next. Certainly death for poor Martine comes to seem preferable. Charles is a psycho, truly reprehensible. I didn't want to spend any more time with him and longed for the novel to end, but it didn't. I think however that this was a flaw in the reader, who does not possess the requisite macabre fascination such fiction demands.
This is good Simenon, though not his best. It's funny, the first person Simenons I’ve read tend to be his weakest. But then I've only read about eight novels or so out of four hundred, hardly a statistically reliable sample. The strongest works I’ve read are rendered in third-person; they are The Strangers in the House and Dirty Snow. 3-½ stars for this one. Recommended with some reservations.
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across from each other discussing details of the case. Now Dr. Alavoine is writing to the judge from prison. He wants the judge to know that his opinion that he acted without premeditation was incorrect. Dr Alavoine and the village setting in which he practices are meant to evoke thoughts of Charles Bovary. I wouldn't pursue this idea if his given name weren’t in fact also Charles. But this is a very libertine Charles. He screws any female who walks. He kills his first wife with his sexual attentions, so intent is he upon siring the traditional son and heir. Jeanne, the wife, delivers a large girl as if to spite him, though she is in fact quite docile; then she dies. Then the rare thing happens. The woman who will soon be Dr. Alavoine’s second wife, Armande, who possesses truly Madame Bovary-like beauty, waltzes into his life. She is without the flaws of her literary double. In fact, the woman is a wonder. But Charles can only think of women as either whores or sheep. How could he possibly think himself equal to such an amazing woman. He can’t. It is he who's submissive to Armande. This arrangement represents a profound humiliation for him.
His life comes to seem strange. He feels detached, as if he were watching a movie with himself in a minor role. The kindness of neighbors and colleagues, his high standing in the community -- all this leaves him in disbelief. Eventually his low self-esteem blossoms into a grander alienation. He descends into a kind of dissociative state. He sees himself as hungry, but he doesn’t know for what. Certainly it isn’t the comfortable existence at the side of this exquisite woman. He decides to be unfaithful to Armande and succeeds with a fat sleazy hooker who appalls even him.
Then on a professional trip to Nantes he meets Martine. He flips for her. She is submissive--the only sort of woman he can feel superior to. But how does this lead to murder? Martine we learn is heading to a meeting with a well-known rake in La Roche-sur-Yon, where Charles lives and practices. There's no way she can work for that lush, that reprobate, Charles thinks. He takes Martine home to his wife, explaining that she is a charge sent to him by a colleague. Martine moves into the spare room. Armande welcomes her and helps her find a flat. It's all Charles can do to stay sane when at home in his surgery seeing patients. For having Martine in the house with his wife means not having Martine.
Finally, she moves out and Charles goes to see her where she shares the home of a widow. He is the sort of man who gets jealous of a woman's past liaisons. And now that she is out of his home, out of his control, he explodes with rage. Under duress he coerces a confession of dubious accuracy from her about her past. The only way to cleanse her of this past, of course, is to kill her. This will be her deliverance.
Its not hard to see, coming from the home he did, how Charles has missed a crucial part his development. He is incapable of having an adult relationship, but must seek out a barfly half his age to fall head over heels in love with. So when the pangs of love do finally come, he is unfamiliar with them and lacks the emotional maturity to master his primitive jealousies. He begins to lay out his rationale for murder. Certainly, he believes in the distinctions he makes, but to the reader they are gibberish, madness. He’s around the bend, has been for some time, and his attempts to reconstruct, to justify the murder are pathetic, futile, meaningless.
He possesses no ability to forgive Martine much less to forget her past. His god-like attitude is 'why hasn’t this woman better prepared herself for my inevitable arrival?' He takes her failure in this regard as a personal insult. Why has she been so sleazy? Why has she fucked so many men? He reminded me here for a moment of the crazed Eric Roberts character in the film Star 80. As for Martine, from her we no longer hear a peep. She has been subsumed by Charles’s crazy scheming. He is constantly on the look out for “the Other”; that is to say, her previous libertine character. He is determined to beat any trace of it out of her. Any reminder of that previous life — he beats her senseless. Nor is she allowed to show fear.
I came to hate Charles. He is without a single sympathetic shard to his character. An utter dread builds in the reader at the prospect of what he might do next. Certainly death for poor Martine comes to seem preferable. Charles is a psycho, truly reprehensible. I didn't want to spend any more time with him and longed for the novel to end, but it didn't. I think however that this was a flaw in the reader, who does not possess the requisite macabre fascination such fiction demands.
This is good Simenon, though not his best. It's funny, the first person Simenons I’ve read tend to be his weakest. But then I've only read about eight novels or so out of four hundred, hardly a statistically reliable sample. The strongest works I’ve read are rendered in third-person; they are The Strangers in the House and Dirty Snow. 3-½ stars for this one. Recommended with some reservations.
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LibraryThing member michaelbartley
at first this book reminded me of Camus' The Stranger, however as I read more it more the story of DV. told by the peson that committeds the viloence.
LibraryThing member CBJames
From the very first page, we know who the killer is; we know that he'll be captured, found guilty and sentenced to prison; but we don't know who his victim is.
Georges Simenon's novel Acts of Passion takes the form of a long letter, written by a killer to the judge who sentenced him. The killer
The killer begins with the first days of his marriage. Did he kill his wife? It seems like a good marriage, though there are hints of trouble to come. A mother-in-law who is around much too often. Does he kill her? After several years together, the killer takes a much younger mistress. Will she be his victim? He manages to introduce the young woman to his wife and to convince his wife that she is alone in the world and in need of help. His wife agrees to let the girl live in their spare bedroom.
This certainly can't end well.
In his introduction Roger Ebert explains that Simenon deliberately wrote without style; that whenever he encountered a particularly literary turn of phrase in his writing, Simenon edited it out. The result is some of the most spare writing you'll find, even in a crime novel. I imagine that while writing Acts of Passion whenever Simenon came across a passage that built up suspense he took it away as well. He never tries to make this novel a page turner. His killer is not hiding the truth from the reader just to keep the reader reading. He's telling his story to the judge, trying to explain his actions, not to justify them but to make them understandable. He's not trying to tell a suspenseful yarn. But he does.
Acts of Passion has obvious links to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Both deal with a man who comes to kill and is then haunted by the act. If you were to say that Simenon is not in Dostoevsky's league, I would agree of course, but I think you may be structuring the comparison incorrectly. It's not that he's in a different league, it's that he's playing a different game in the first place. Dostoevsky's wonderful novel is concerned with higher philosophical issues. The crime in Simenon's novel is based on passion alone. The killer cannot bring the judge or the reader to understand his actions in the end because we have not shared his passion. Dostoevsky's hero becomes mad as his story progresses. Simenon's killer is mad from the outset. That he seeks understanding is a sign of his own madness. He's similar to the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" who keeps insisting he is not mad right up until the end.
All of this makes Act of Passion an anti-thriller thriller. Without using any of the typical tropes one finds in thrillers, without overtly forcing suspense on the narrative, Simenon keeps the reader turning pages caught up in the story in spite of it all.
Georges Simenon's novel Acts of Passion takes the form of a long letter, written by a killer to the judge who sentenced him. The killer
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wants to explain why he did what he did; he wants someone to understand his actions, to see him as reasonable in spite of it all. The judge knows who he killed, of course, so there's no reason for him to mention the murder until he has to. This is what gives Act of Passion its narrative tension, a tension the reader feels almost at once.The killer begins with the first days of his marriage. Did he kill his wife? It seems like a good marriage, though there are hints of trouble to come. A mother-in-law who is around much too often. Does he kill her? After several years together, the killer takes a much younger mistress. Will she be his victim? He manages to introduce the young woman to his wife and to convince his wife that she is alone in the world and in need of help. His wife agrees to let the girl live in their spare bedroom.
This certainly can't end well.
In his introduction Roger Ebert explains that Simenon deliberately wrote without style; that whenever he encountered a particularly literary turn of phrase in his writing, Simenon edited it out. The result is some of the most spare writing you'll find, even in a crime novel. I imagine that while writing Acts of Passion whenever Simenon came across a passage that built up suspense he took it away as well. He never tries to make this novel a page turner. His killer is not hiding the truth from the reader just to keep the reader reading. He's telling his story to the judge, trying to explain his actions, not to justify them but to make them understandable. He's not trying to tell a suspenseful yarn. But he does.
Acts of Passion has obvious links to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Both deal with a man who comes to kill and is then haunted by the act. If you were to say that Simenon is not in Dostoevsky's league, I would agree of course, but I think you may be structuring the comparison incorrectly. It's not that he's in a different league, it's that he's playing a different game in the first place. Dostoevsky's wonderful novel is concerned with higher philosophical issues. The crime in Simenon's novel is based on passion alone. The killer cannot bring the judge or the reader to understand his actions in the end because we have not shared his passion. Dostoevsky's hero becomes mad as his story progresses. Simenon's killer is mad from the outset. That he seeks understanding is a sign of his own madness. He's similar to the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" who keeps insisting he is not mad right up until the end.
All of this makes Act of Passion an anti-thriller thriller. Without using any of the typical tropes one finds in thrillers, without overtly forcing suspense on the narrative, Simenon keeps the reader turning pages caught up in the story in spite of it all.
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LibraryThing member rainidontmind
One day I will give Simenon another chance, but I really did not like anything about this book.
LibraryThing member rkreish
Act of Passion is the most disturbing book I've read this year. It's one of Simenon's non-Maigret novels, ones he called romans durs. It's also rare in Simenon's novels because it's a first person story. Dr. Charles Alavoine after being found guilty of manslaughter (the act of passion in the
It's a book about a criminal's mind, and the story gets worse as it goes along as we approach the recap of the murder. Alavoine's view of women is quite horrid, and his crime is quite horrible as well. I couldn't stop reading in part because this book is such a contrast to the Maigret series and because I mistakenly thought the narrator would have a flash of insight.
A few things in the novel place it in 1947 for me: (1) the focus on psychoanalysis; (2) Alavoine's journey from the provinces to a larger city strikes me as particularly of the period; and (3) the mention of tubercular husbands..
It's not a pleasant book. Alavoine is not a sympathetic main character. And it's a book where the main character's rationalizations do not make sense to me either. I don't feel like a psychoanalyst, but I do feel like a gawker by reading this very unsettling book.
Finally, a couple suggestions for further reading: first an interesting conversation in the comments about recommended Simenon novels see Asylum, and this lengthy piece in Open Letters Monthly discusses the romans durs along with a spoiler-laden discussion of this particular novel.
I borrowed the book from the library.
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title), writes a letter to the examining magistrate explaining how actually he planned the murder. The letter is his plea to be understood, and it's pretty obvious that someone who wants to declare how he planned murder is not the most easy character to read.It's a book about a criminal's mind, and the story gets worse as it goes along as we approach the recap of the murder. Alavoine's view of women is quite horrid, and his crime is quite horrible as well. I couldn't stop reading in part because this book is such a contrast to the Maigret series and because I mistakenly thought the narrator would have a flash of insight.
A few things in the novel place it in 1947 for me: (1) the focus on psychoanalysis; (2) Alavoine's journey from the provinces to a larger city strikes me as particularly of the period; and (3) the mention of tubercular husbands..
It's not a pleasant book. Alavoine is not a sympathetic main character. And it's a book where the main character's rationalizations do not make sense to me either. I don't feel like a psychoanalyst, but I do feel like a gawker by reading this very unsettling book.
Finally, a couple suggestions for further reading: first an interesting conversation in the comments about recommended Simenon novels see Asylum, and this lengthy piece in Open Letters Monthly discusses the romans durs along with a spoiler-laden discussion of this particular novel.
I borrowed the book from the library.
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Language
Original language
French
Physical description
240 p.
ISBN
1590173856 / 9781590173855
Local notes
French title: Lettre à mon juge