Simenon's Lolita?
Review of the Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition (2014) of a translation* by Siân Reynolds of the French language original "Le Cercle des Mahé" (1946)

The Mahé Circle starts off with a Doctor François Mahé being called to attend at the deathbed of a woman on the island of Porquerolles in the Mediterranean. The doctor is on vacation with his family and the local medico is away. Mahé cannot do anything for the woman except sign off on the death certificate. He is struck by the squalor that the woman's family is living in, and particularly by the teenage daughter in a red dress who is the caregiver to two younger children. Throughout several further summer vacations in the book, Mahé continues to fixate on the teenage girl, but never actually talks to her. Vicariously, he encourages his nephew to have a relationship with her. After the death of Mahé's own mother he begins to resent the narrow lifestyle that he feels has been enforced on him by his family "circle." He decides he wants to move to Proquerolles and take up his medical practice there. Meanwhile the teenage girl & family have moved away. Mahé can no longer join her in this life, but perhaps in the next one.

The book started off with the appearance that the doctor's obsession with the teenager would drive the book. Simenon perhaps didn't dare to take it as far as Nabokov's later Lolita (1955), so it is all very vague throughout. The red dress is more of the attracting symbol than any actual physical attribute of the girl. The plot really becomes more about the doctor feeling trapped in a conventional marriage and lifestyle and the red dress and the island are symbols for his escape from them. It was all a bit too vague and fuzzy though to make for very compelling reading.


Cover of the first French language edition published by Gallimard in 1946. Image sourced from Association Jacques Riviere

After reading the first dozen Simenon Maigret novels this year, I'm now going to read a half-dozen or so of the non-Maigrets. Many of the non-Maigret books are being translated into English for the first time and there are still probably quite a few yet to be done.

The Mahé Circle is the 3rd of my readings of Georges Simenon's romans durs** (French: hard novels) which was his personal category for his non-Chief Inspector Maigret fiction. This is like Graham Greene, who divided his work into his "entertainments" and his actual "novels." Similar to Greene, the borders between the two areas are quite flexible as we are often still dealing with crime and the issues of morals and ethics. Simenon's romans durs are definitely in the noir category though, as compared to the sometimes lighter Maigrets where the often cantankerous Chief Inspector provides a solution and the guilty are brought to justice.

Trivia and Links
* This is the 1st ever English language translation of this Simenon novel.

** There is a limited selection of 100 books in the Goodreads' Listopia of Simenon's romans durs which you can see here. Other sources say there are at least 117 of them, such as listed at Art and Popular Culture.

The Mahé Circle has never been adapted for television or film. ( )

יצירת מופת פסיכולוגית קטנה שקורעת את המסווה מעל הבורגנות הצרפתית הזעירה ( )

Secondo libro di Simenon per me, è sempre un piacere ritrovare la sua scrittura ma la storia non mi ha fatto impazzire e sicuramente molto inferiore al "Il piccolo libraio di Archangelsk" ( )

Published 2014 (in English)



Back in the day I did a year of French. My teacher was a native speaker. You’d think that this would make her fun and interesting, right? You couldn’t be more wrong! All she did was drill us on grammar, and I couldn’t even understand what she was saying half the time. She just expected me to automatically know the language as if I’d already lived in France for years. I was always procrastinating doing French stuff, and she was always expecting me to write and memorize a huge bunch of sentences in a language that I hardly knew, and then repeat it back to her. She totally turned me off to the French language. I started hating everything remotely connected with French and France in particular. I know not all French people are awful, cruel, soulless people, and that most are friendly and completely normal, and that I was just unlucky to have gotten stuck with the one person I’d be totally ok with having deported… Just saying…I’m done ranting now…That felt good.

If you're into French-speaking literature, read the rest of this review on my blog. ( )

I've never read any of Simenon's Maigret mysteries, but have read and enjoyed several of his non-Maigret mysteries. The Mahe Circle is not a crime novel, but a novel that belongs on the shelf next to Camus and Sartre

Dr. Mahe is a country doctor. He lives with his mother, wife and two children, and one year decides to take his family to a different place for their summer vacation. It is while on vacation on the island of Porquerolles that he begins to question his life, and realizes that he has been thoughtlessly leading a life that had been chosen for him. He begins obsessing over events that occurred on the island and people he encountered there, and dreams of escaping his conventional life. Can this come to a good end?

Recommended ( )