Classic about a
Family. Go to the French for classic novels about family: Stendahl's The Red and the Black, Balzac's Père Goriot, and Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series which
includes the incredible war novel La Débâcle, to name just a few. The French title of the
novel reviewed here is Le Testament
Donadieu and it was first published in 1937.
Donadieu’s Will
– Georges Simenon
The sudden and mysterious death of patriarch Oscar
Donadieu at 72 years of age causes a stir in La Rochelle. The shipowner's body
was found at the bottom of the canal and it is hard to believe, knowing Oscar
Donadieu's hard-driving personality, that he could have taken his own life.
Certain members of Donadieu’s family mutter the death was
a crime authored by Frédéric Dargens, the last person to have seen Oscar
Donadieu alive. However, the mystery lies dormant, as other Donadieu heirs
refuse to consider this hypothesis which would involve Frédéric, an old friend
of the family, in a criminal act. Frédéric is a shabby-glamorous figure whose
fortune has fallen on hard times; he ekes out a living owning and operating the
local movie house.
As La Rochelle in western France is a port on the Bay of
Biscay, Donadieu carried on the family Donadieu tradition of making money in
the shipping industry. Donadieu's will stipulates that all of his semi-vast fortune
will go to his four children who will not, however, be able to sell, even
partially, any of his property, before the last of the heirs has reached his
majority. This is Oscar nicknamed Kiki, the youngest son, who may be
cognitively impaired and has borderline personality disorder. As for the
widow Mme Donadieu, she only benefits from a quarter of the property.
These astonishing arrangements completely upset the pecking
order of the family Donadieu and plunge the adult children into confusion
and uncertainty. The Widow Donadieu really kicks over family tradition by
involving herself in the family businesses, making decisions with an authority
she simply takes since her son Michel and son-in-law Jean lack smarts and
gumption enough to protect themselves or the businesses from her hare-brained
ideas. Simenon makes clear that Donadieu family has had its day and it either
has to improve its stock and way of thinking or vanish due to their own decadence.
Widow Donadieu gains an ally with the assistance of Philippe Dargens
(son of Frédéric). Vaguely motivated by class resentment, he has seduced the
teenaged Martine Donadieu and taken her to Paris. Philippe is a wheeler-dealer
and builds a social and professional relationship that gives him access to
funds and connections that help him establish an increasingly preeminent place
in the Donadieu family, thanks to his ambition, dynamism, and an ethics-free
business acumen. His marriage to Martine is celebrated and he becomes rich and
prominent in Paris.
Little by little, the Donadieus will see their power over
their own destiny decline. Michel, the eldest son, is soft, gluttonous, and hypochondriacal.
Worse, he is especially focused on the sexual harassment and coercion of vulnerable
young girls. Philippe finds it easy to relegate him to their country house in Saint-Raphaël
after the scandal Michael instigated after impregnating his secretary, the
defenseless country girl Odette Baillet. Her case, however, is written up in a
scandal sheet by the reptilian Dr. Lamb, which leads to Lamb’s grisly end. This
terrible incident doesn’t wise up Michel regarding the unwisdom of chasing young girls.
Only Marthe Donadieu and her husband Jean Olsen remain in
La Rochelle, where they assume the management of what remains of the family businesses.
As for Philippe, driven by ambition and fueled by success, he has created a big
financial services firm in Paris. He is able to start in big business thanks to
the financial and social support of a couple he charmed into trusting him.
Albert Grindorge is heir to a huge fortune, and his wife
Paulette has the hots for Philippe. Philippe
accepts Paulette as his mistress in order to use her to influence Albert into
coughing up money should Philippe’s bank and currency exchange start to go
belly up. Paulette represents “female nuttiness as chaos-inducing element” in
the Simenonian universe (see Lady Makinson in Talatala,
Sylvie’s mother in The
Lodger, or the flirty young wife in The Glass
Cage). Paulette is muddled and misguided about her own and Philippe’s intentions
with regard to their affair. She concocts a plan that blows up spectacularly
for all involved and serves as the climax of the novel.
At 300 pages, this is unusually long for Simenon’s
non-Maigret novels. Family sagas such as The Old
Man Dies, The
Nightclub, and The
Delivery are usually about 180 pages, so in this one Simenon gives himself space
to detail these glaring Donadieu mediocrities and their hereditary debility. They
are so listless and hidebound that they are easily upset by an ambitious upstart
smarter and more energetic than them who pushes them aside as easily nouveau
riche in Trollope novels push aside old land-owning families (see The
Way We Live Now or The
Claverings).
Readers who like serious stories of family decline such as
Mann’s Buddenbrooks will probably
like this novel, though, heaven knows Simenon is a lot more sensational than Mann.
Interesting! I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
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