French title: Le Confessional
Year: 1966
Year Englished: 1968, tr. Jean Stewart
The Confessional
– Georges Simenon
A reunion between two former fellow students – Dr. Bar,
who practices dentistry in Cannes and Dr. Boisdieu, who does medicine in Nice -
allows their respective adolescent children to get to know and commiserate with
each other. Sixteen-year-old André Bar is an only child, and thus
stereotypically lonely, selfish, impatient, introspective and only slowly waking
out of the self-centered dreaminess of childhood. Francine Boisdieu, slightly
older than him, compares her younger brothers and André. But she's an open and
spontaneous girl that intuits André needs a friend. She comes from a loving
family, which is not the case of Andrew, whose parents are having the marriage problems
of discontented middle-aged people.
One day in Nice, while André escorts Francine home, André
spots his mother coming out of a house and they quickly go the other way. The
young man conducts a little investigation and discovers that his mother is
carrying on an extramarital relationship.
Although he does not tell his parents, they understand
that André is hiding something from them. They realize that he is finally awake
enough to notice other people have feelings too and see something is not right
in the marriage of his parents. They, in fact, dislike each other intensely.
His parents try to put an end to the distress of their son by confiding their
problems through hesitant and self-serving confessions to him. It’s a lot to
ask of a man-child, to assume such a burden.
Lucien Bar is a mild man, but without much scope. Like
other Simenonian jewelers, watchmakers, proofreaders, and bookkeepers, he’s
better with exacting detail and standard protocol while the overarching and
unique are outside his range. He tries to comfort his son as best he can,
including taking some of the blame for the loveless marriage. As for Josée Bar,
she feels more guilty towards her son than her husband. She is ashamed at her
inability to provide an atmosphere of love, trust, and harmony at home. The Bar
cook and housekeeper calls it a “madhouse” and yearns to go live with “real
people” like her daughter and Italian son-in-law.
André feels disappointment as his parents struggle with
their marriage. He talks about his problems to Francine, without explaining to
her the exact nature of his worries. The girl shows him friendship and support.
The trust they have for each other, however, will not lead to any love. André
is not nearly ready to handle added intense complicated feelings.
In the Bar family, the atmosphere is deteriorating day by
day. André's mother, in addition to her infidelity towards her husband, has a
female friend Natasha who is a bad influence. Josée goes out at night as often
as possible and drinks herself sick until the other patrons in the bar start
giving her the disapproving looks Europeans are so good at.
Josée Bar can’t stand the feeling that that her son is
judging her behavior (a constant anxiety for Simenon’s characters: being
judged) and decides to leave. Her husband only narrowly manages to persuade her
to stay, mainly by encouraging André to be more tender with her. Part of
growing up, Simenon seems to imply, is detecting the faults of parents,
understanding them as imperfect people, and forgiving them anyway.
André feels helpless in the face of family problems in which
each member is a victim. He also takes the cool stance that the marriage is not
his responsibility to fix. He has his own integrity and sanity to maintain.
Rather a slice of life tale, but rendered well. Simenon
is sympathetic toward youth surrounded by nutty adults who are too conceited to
age gracefully. For Simenon, the individual’s basic task is to be responsible for
her own life; the groups that society constructs are liable to breakdown and
dysfunction so we have to have inner strength to focus on what we can control –
our responses to everything that happens in life, lucky and not – and rid
ourselves of the illusion that we have control over our health, property,
reputation, or positions of authority.
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