French title: Malempin
First published: 1940
Translation: Isabel Quigley, 1978
The Family Lie
- Georges Simenon
In this short non-Maigret novel, Dr. Malempin must come
to terms with his parent’s sins, big and small, while his young son battles
diphtheria. The child’s illness has derailed family plans for a vacation in the
South.
While keeping vigil over his son, the doctor is struck by
the child’s unfathomable expression and wonders what memories of the infection
the child will retain. This thought causes Dr. Malempin to reflect on his own
past, how his own memories were formed, the parts his parents played in making
those memories. Could the same process be unfolding in his son?
This train of thought, in turn, causes him to reflect
deeply and turn to journaling as a way to think about his past. He goes over in
memory the story of young Edouard, in the countryside, as a very young child.
He feels vaguely his mother and her family’s discontent when Great Uncle Tesson
marries a much younger woman, Elise. He recalls wondering why his parents, when
visiting the rich moneylender Uncle Tesson and Elise every Sunday, seem unlike
themselves, falsely sincere. His father is a small-scale farmer, his mother the
daughter of a ruined notary, who feels the humiliation of having but little
money and having to cozy up to a rich relative.
One day after visiting the Malempins, Great Uncle Tesson
just disappears. The adult doctor cannot recall the exact circumstances of the
vanishing of the unfriendly usurer.
Questioned by the police, his mother tells bald-faced lies, right in the
front of young Edouard who know lies when he hears them. Frightened that the
child has something on them and will talk unwisely to the police, his parents
ship to Edouard to his Aunt Elise. Though his stay was to be limited to the
time the investigators were on the case, he continued to live with his aunt, to
whom he was attracted in various ways. Yeah, those ways too, Simenon never
flinched from disturbing realities (see the abuse in The Little Saint).
So, this novel examines family secrets and a man’s
gradual understanding of adult behavior that seemed so odd to a child. He
considers the past’s influences on his own behavior. The doctor’s examination
of his own childhood enables him to better understand his loveless marriage and
his children. Simenon emphasizes the sharp-eyed but limited point of view of a
child and the tenuous trickiness of memory for adults. We readers recall how
acutely concentrated our powers of observation were when we were kids, but we
realize we didn’t understand because we lacked experience of the adult world,
with its mysterious reactions and
unspoken assumptions. Childhood experience shapes us without our knowledge, to
affect our entire lives as adults.
In Simenon’s ‘hard novels’ – aka non-Maigret
psychological thrillers – motivated by one of life’s usual crises (illness,
accident, crime or family members forgetting one’s birthday), an often alienated
protagonist must evaluate his daily life. Sometimes he choose another way of
living but most often it’s only realization that something important happened.
Sometimes he chooses a healthier way, sometimes neurosis keeps him in his rut.
My only gripe was that going unexplained were references
to French high and low culture of the early 1940s. Too bad publishers were too
cheap to add at the end a couple pages of notes that explained allusions that
nobody in the non-French world could be expected to understand. Not translated
for almost 40 years since publishers and translators were unsure of its sales,
this sad novel is not for everyone but for the rare reader who, like
Simenon, accepts inevitability, accepts what will naturally occur in this
delightful and maddening world – and does not live "crushed by the present or fearful of the future."
My Review of Other Non-Maigret
Novels by Simenon
The Old Man Dies
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