Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Act of Passion by Georges Simenon. Act of Passion by Georges Simenon ,. For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Growing up as a good boy in the grip of a domineering mother, he trains as a doctor, marries, opens a medical practice in a quiet country town, and settles into an existence of impeccable bourgeois conformity.
And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility. Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, he meets Martine. It is time for the sleeper to awake. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
To ask other readers questions about Act of Passion , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Mar 22, Glenn Russell rated it it was amazing. Charles Alavoine, a man Roger Ebert deems as entirely encased within himself, devoid of any capacity for empathy. I suspect an entire essay could be written comparing the two novels but I will refrain from making any further parallels beyond noting these obvious similarities.
How much wisdom and understanding does Charles Alavoine, in fact, possess? For starters, as Roger Ebert remarks, Alavoine is a fetishist: The accretion of details suggests the mind of a masturbator re-creating scenes of past erotic intensity. It is possible to imagine Alavoine reading over his own pages and feeling aroused. Charles also writes of the terrible emptiness he feels, how he alone realizes just how indifferent the universe is to our fragile human desires.
An all-pervasive uneasiness forces Charles to conclude he is wasting his life. But then it happens: Martine awakens in him a furious desire - not only a sexual desire but also a desire to "find his shadow. Charles is so totally bound to Martine, wants to melt into her, such that he has "awakened the phantoms" and thus loses psychic control, even to the point where he hates all other men who so much as approach her.
He desires Martine and demands the world completely accommodate his desire.
- Lettre a Mon Juge (French, Book).
- Act of Passion;
- Naked Men Illustrated.
And there are times when Charles's rage, his phantoms, boil over - he physically assaults Martine. Charles recognizes he is, at times, possessed by his rage. He also realizes there are other times his obsession for Martine becomes overwhelming. But what about his own ignorance? Throughout his letter, Charles claims a capacity for unique awareness and a rarefied understanding.
Charles can detect when he is in the grip of rage, of anger; likewise, he can identify those other times when he is filled with greed, of the need to make Martine his own. But how about his pervading ignorance, his lack of compassion and empathy? And how much of our own life can we detect in Charles Alavoine? Not only against Armande.
Pages dans la catégorie « Roman de Georges Simenon »
Against all of you, against life, as you understand it, against the idea you have of the union of two beings and the heights of passion they can attain. View all 23 comments. Mar 20, William2 rated it liked it Shelves: Alavoine, recently convicted for murder, is writing to M.
The convict believes that during discovery he established some sort of connection with the judge. For many weeks the two men and their lawyers sat across from each other discussing details of the case. Alavoine is writing to the judge from prison. He wants the judge to know that his opinion that he acted without premeditation was incorrect Epistolary. He wants the judge to know that his opinion that he acted without premeditation was incorrect.
Dr Alavoine and the village setting in which he practices are meant to evoke thoughts of Charles Bovary. But this is a very libertine Charles. He screws any female who walks. He kills his first wife with his sexual attentions, so intent is he upon siring the traditional son and heir. Jeanne, the wife, delivers a large girl as if to spite him, though she is in fact quite docile; then she dies. Then the rare thing happens.
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The woman who will soon be Dr. She is without the flaws of her literary double. In fact, the woman is a wonder. But Charles can only think of women as either whores or sheep. How could he possibly think himself equal to such an amazing woman. It is he who's submissive to Armande. This arrangement represents a profound humiliation for him. His life comes to seem strange. He feels detached, as if he were watching a movie with himself in a minor role. The kindness of neighbors and colleagues, his high standing in the community -- all this leaves him in disbelief.
- SOFT ENCOUNTER!
- The Island Horse.
- A Life of Ones Own.
Eventually his low self-esteem blossoms into a grander alienation. He descends into a kind of dissociative state. He decides to be unfaithful to Armande and succeeds with a fat sleazy hooker who appalls even him. Then on a professional trip to Nantes he meets Martine.
He flips for her. She is submissive--the only sort of woman he can feel superior to. But how does this lead to murder? Martine we learn is heading to a meeting with a well-known rake in La Roche-sur-Yon, where Charles lives and practices. There's no way she can work for that lush, that reprobate, Charles thinks. He takes Martine home to his wife, explaining that she is a charge sent to him by a colleague. Martine moves into the spare room.
Armande welcomes her and helps her find a flat. It's all Charles can do to stay sane when at home in his surgery seeing patients. For having Martine in the house with his wife means not having Martine. Finally, she moves out and Charles goes to see her where she shares the home of a widow.
He is the sort of man who gets jealous of a woman's past liaisons. And now that she is out of his home, out of his control, he explodes with rage. Under duress he coerces a confession of dubious accuracy from her about her past. The only way to cleanse her of this past, of course, is to kill her. This will be her deliverance.
Its not hard to see, coming from the home he did, how Charles has missed a crucial part his development. He is incapable of having an adult relationship, but must seek out a barfly half his age to fall head over heels in love with. So when the pangs of love do finally come, he is unfamiliar with them and lacks the emotional maturity to master his primitive jealousies. He begins to lay out his rationale for murder. Certainly, he believes in the distinctions he makes, but to the reader they are gibberish, madness.
He possesses no ability to forgive Martine much less to forget her past. Why has she been so sleazy? Why has she fucked so many men? He reminded me here for a moment of the crazed Eric Roberts character in the film Star As for Martine, from her we no longer hear a peep. He is determined to beat any trace of it out of her. Any reminder of that previous life — he beats her senseless. Nor is she allowed to show fear.
Martine was from Belgium, a drifter, existing on odd secretarial jobs and one-night stands with passing men. Although Martine was neither beautiful nor sophisticated, she and Alavoine instantly enjoyed passionate sex. Then, with Armande's reluctant acquiescence, he hired Martine as his assistant and visited her lodgings whenever he could. This lasted until Armande caught them in flagrante and told both to go.
The guilty pair went to Paris, where Charles acquired a practice with a flat in a working-class district. At last able to spend all night together, their relationship deepened, but in the process exposed the deep psychological flaws their relationship suffered from. As he learned how bruised and vulnerable she was from past troubles, Charles began behaving like his father and would beat her to escape his own demons.
One night he decided that the only way to end this descending spiral into depravity was to strangle her. The last chapter notes briefly that by the time this confession reached its addressee, Alavoine had committed suicide in the prison infirmary. Act of Passion is one of the first novels Simenon wrote after emigrating to the US.
He then took a break of 6 months, which, according to Pierre Assouline, was a clear sign that a Simenon classic was in the offing.
Act of Passion - Wikipedia
In writing this novel Simenon broke new ground, not only by choosing to use a first person narrator. He developed the original idea at Bradenton Beach [2] at the beginning of November, writing the final version, according to Patrick Marnham, "in Florida's oppressive December heat", sitting at his typewriter dressed only in a few sweat bands. The asexual nature of Alavoine's wife reminds us of the same trait in Simenon's first wife, Tigy. Likewise, Alavoine's dominant mother is a reflection of Simenon's own mother. It is typical for Simenon to distill the darker moments from his own life into a fictional story.
According to Patrick Marnham, Les Vacances de Maigret is a similar novel that once again makes use of the fatal jealousy of a doctor to help Simenon finally rid himself of his own ghosts. I really do not know if it was worth the trouble. I wrote it in order to rid myself of my ghosts, not to commit the same deed carried out by my protagonist. Since then, in the meantime over a year, I have had the feeling that i have started a new life, a life that is as full and juicy as a ripe fruit.
By committing suicide, he attempts to reunite with her and finally states: We did all that we could. Not Enabled Screen Reader: Enabled Amazon Best Sellers Rank: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review.
Act of Passion
Showing of 1 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Mais, franchement, je ne comprends pas. Je ne vois vraiment pas comment certaines personnes peuvent penser et agir ainsi. Mais, apparemment, beaucoup ne sont pas d'accord. Je suppose qu'il faut de tout pour faire un monde.
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