[There are a lot of spoilers in this review.]
The story is set in post-war Batum, a seaside oil town bordering Turkey in what is now Georgia, just as the communists were taking a strangle hold on power. Simenon does a masterful job of describing Batum as a labyrinth of unpaved roads bordered by unwashed and unremarkable houses that are in various states of disrepair. He describes the residents of Batum as the worst kind of informers telling on their friend to the KGB for a meager addition to their rations. Batum, in Simenon's eyes, is the end of the line kind of city where nobody voluntarily goes to live but for people who have no choice. Simenon paints such a dark and depressing picture of the town that it almost comes alive as a character in the book.
The four characters most involved in the story are Adil Bey, the Turkish Consul; John, a reporter for an American newspaper who ultimately arranges for Adil Bey's and Sonia's escape; Nejla, the Persian Consul's mistress, and for a time Adil Bey's lover; and Sonia Kolin, Adil Bey's secretary and lover.
The story begins with a cocktail party at the Italian Consul's home where Adil Bey, the protagonist, is introduced to the four of the five ex-patriots living in Batum: the Italian Consul and his wife and the Persian Consul and his lover. Adil Bey takes offense with some comments made by the Italian Consul and storms out of the party beginning a period of relative isolation from the other ex-pats. He goes back to his consulate which has been stripped of everything by his predecessor's secretary on his departure and functions as Adil Bey's apartment. You imagine him living in a dark and dusty set of rooms, the equivalent of a contemporary crack house.
Adil Bey is a Victorian style gentleman who is completely unfamiliar with washing his own clothes, putting sheets on the bed, fashioning curtains and buying food: the fundamentals of living. So, he begins this slovenly life of sleeping on the mattress, never changing his clothes, eating whatever food - rotten or not - out of cans, and rarely showering. Simenon repeatedly paints Adil Bey as an anachronism: a man with Victorian mores living in the second half of the twentieth century; a man who fought in Galipoli but doesn't seem to know how to cook his own food; or a man who seems so weak and manages to survive in Batum.
Adil Bey also starts becoming sicker and sicker over time. At first the sickness is not more than a minor inconvenience but then it turns into a bad cough, then into heavy sweating, then into insomnia and then into severe weight gain. This transformation layered on top of everything else really turns Adil Bey into a sad and sickly creature.
In the middle of his collapsing health, Adil Bey falls in love with his secretary, Sonia, and starts a cold almost sterile love affair with her. She comes to see him in the evenings when they make love and then she heads home very early in the morning before the city awakes. While this is going on Adil Bey's health continues to deteriorate until he starts showing symptoms of schizophrenia. He starts walking down the street talking to himself, wandering around the town and the port aimlessly and, most importantly, thinking that everyone is out to get him.
It turns out he is not wrong on the last point. During a fight with Sonia he grabs her purse, rummages through it and discovers that she has been slowly poisoning him with arsenic which is why he has been slowly falling apart. Sonia apologizes and concedes that the communist government had pressed her into doing this and that she truly loves him and he reciprocates the emotion. They make plans to leave town and to smuggle Sonia out of the country on a Belgian freighter that is leaving the next night. But the KGB finds out and kills Sonia and leaves Adil Bey to linger in his own personal hell.
8 comments:
What an amazing writer. Thanks for the excellent review.
I recently read Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt, about a seaside oil town in an unnamed Middle Eastern country that’s more or less Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. Munif takes us through a couple dozen characters whose lives intersect as small towns are bulldozed and local communities displaced by big American oil operations. It was, when you get right down to it, not dark at all, considering the disruptions he was describing. Not that it wasn’t depressing at times, but Munif’s style isn’t what I would call dark.
There were a couple sections where you could just feel the locals’ world coming apart, especially when a big American cruise ship pulls into the new port of Harran where the Arabs have been working like slaves and their quarters fenced off from the newly built American section with its air conditioners and swimming pools. The sight of all these pale-skinned women on the decks of the ships, in bathing suits or naked, “perfumed, shining and laughing, like horses after a long race,” drives the men into despair. It’s a brilliant section.
Later, when the boat returns and the emir is able to get a good look through his new telescope, he stares at it for days, describing every movement to his entourage, and Munif tells us their reaction:
“What the emir was saying could not be believed, a man could not imagine such a thing: real naked women, wandering among men on the deck of the ship? How could the men stand to have them walking around and coming near without burning up, without exploding like gunpowder, without sticking themselves like tent pegs into every crevice of those warm beautiful bodies?”
Like tent pegs! That’s good stuff. The whole book is worth reading just for these sections of moaning despair.
So I only read the first two paragraphs of your review because The Window Over the Way sounds like something I should pick up and I didn’t want to read the spoilers. Would I like it? What do you think? Dark is good; I like dark. But good story? Good characters? Good writing? I’m avoiding the spoilers in case I’m going to read it.
Dude, if you want to write reviews of the books that you have read you should get your own blog! Stop depositing them in my blog's comments!!
I don't know too much about character development in the same way as you more literary types think about it. However, I think that Simenon does not do a terrific job of developing his characters but he develops them sufficiently that they have substance. One reason for that, I think, is that his novels tend to be on the short side.
Speaking of books I’ve read, I finished Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi last week. I don’t understand what all the hype was about. It seemed to me another of these self-aggrandizing, self-absorbed, navel-gazing blogs that aren’t worth the paper they’re published on – never mind being a “masterwork,” as Anthony Lane reiterated, echoing so many critics, in his New Yorker column this week (where he thankfully skewers The Watchmen movie).
Satrapi takes us through her coming-of-age, during which her parents coddle, shield, and spoil her as a member of Iran’s middle-class, shipping her off to European private schools and buying her presents, like a car, when she does good. Retelling it without the least sense of insight or irony, she manages to make mush out of one of the most interesting historical events – two of them, really – in modern times. What do people see in this goop? I missed it entirely.
Persepolis is the literary equivalent of a "chick-flick." Now stop squatting on my blog!
Yeah, it's really weird to be posting your own reviews here and not even commenting on the blogger's.
I need to read more Simenon and have two of his Romans Dur on my on deck shelf, one of which is next on my list. I think Simenon's strength is that he doesn't delve too deeply into character development. Stuff happens and he shows it and shows how the characters react. He leaves it up to the reader to judge their character.
obd, you've got some great writing and the books you've read sound very interesting. You really should throw your reviews up on your blog so we can take the time to appreciate them in their own context.
Man, people are really reactionary in the blogosphere. I’m just throwing in my two cents, letting the thoughts go where they may, responding to Buzby’s reviews with related commentary. “Weird”? “Interesting”? It’s part of this new thing called a conversation. It’s all the rage with the kids these days.
Listen, it’s like this: Buzby reviewed a book about a seaside oil town he read, and I responded with a book about a seaside oil town I read. That way we’re kind of sharing experiences. I know it sounds extreme, but it’s not like off the charts. Today I went to a party where there was this seahorse with all these branches coming out of it’s head – now that was off the charts.
Anyway, I ordered a copy of the book – the SF library didn’t even have it in their collection of 300 Simenon titles – so I’ll be able to read your review in totality once it gets here.
Hey, everybody, let’s chill, let’s keep the conversation open, let's let text flow: information wants to be free. And not everyone wants to be a blogger.
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