I read this book for the Back
to the Classics Challenge 2016.
Year Published: 1942
Translation: Howard Curtis, 1987
Uncle Charles has
Locked Himself in – Georges Simenon
Uncle Charles is a typical Simenonian hero. An unassuming
bookkeeper who works for his brother, he has no intimate relationships since
he rarely speaks and feels happiest at his solitary hobbies of photography and
fixing small devices. His easy-going
wife and three working-girl daughters take him utterly for granted, just as the
family of ingrates did to the hero in M. Vonde Vanishes.
One day on returning home, Uncle Charles locks himself in the
attic and in a note tells his family to leave him in peace. He has laid in a
stock of provisions so he feels he won’t be disturbed.
Surprised, but not excessively so, the rest of the family
then implements Strategy One and Two of families facing a crisis: Do nothing. Hope it
blows over.
Family life observes its usual course, with the
lazy and lax housewife and the three daughters, concerned above all with their
own lives. They too have locked themselves in, concerned only with selfish,
transitory, mediocre goals in day to day life. One doesn’t blame Uncle Charles for wanting a bit
of vacation from their self-centeredness. A Simenonian hero always reaches points
where he’s got to escape humdrum existence and stoke what’s left
of his self-control and persistence.
After several days, during which each daughter
half-heartedly attempts to get him out of his seclusion, his well-off brother,
owner of a cannery, comes to reason him out of his reclusiveness. In fact, Henri
suspects that Charles has something on him (Henri) and needs to talk him (chuck) around in order
to minimize damage to his (Henri’s) life.
In the reveal, Simenon shows us that life goes on even in a crisis
and that when families are examined closely strange things are revealed. Well
worth reading, with both the realism of The Glass Cage and the unflinching view of the horror of ordinary people as in The Family Lie. People are only human,
Simenon seems to say, so it’s not reasonable to expect them to get out of their rut of acting on ‘What’s in it for me’ for more than two minutes at a time. People can rise to the occasion on occasion, but to
expect most to be smarter, braver, wiser than they can be is just
dreaming the impossible dream.
My reviews of Other Non-Maigret
Novels by Simenon
The Old Man Dies
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