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A review by nick_jenkins
Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon
4.0
What is truly impressive about this novel is how well Simenon simulates an existential novel without really writing one. Noir is always more or less about existential themes—the absurdity of making moral decisions in the face of an indifferent world, the necessity of making them any way, the loneliness of the soul—but to really get the most out of those themes, noir needs either to be grounded in a recognizable real landscape or in a wholly mythic world detached from ours. Simenon's story takes place somewhere in between, in a city that could map onto a number of European cities, but that isn't sharp enough or detailed enough to actually resemble any of them.
That lack of specificity cuts out the ground from under the characters: they seem to be suspended in midair, and their movements therefore seem awkward and ineffectual. Nor does Simenon seem to want to make the novel into a grand allegory: this isn't really a novel about the human condition or the "crisis of man" so much as it is, rather like Brighton Rock, a novel about amorality, seemingly written out of a curiosity about how to make an amoral character into a protagonist. I don't particularly like novels that set themselves that challenge, but this is at least a very good effort at performing such an experiment.
That lack of specificity cuts out the ground from under the characters: they seem to be suspended in midair, and their movements therefore seem awkward and ineffectual. Nor does Simenon seem to want to make the novel into a grand allegory: this isn't really a novel about the human condition or the "crisis of man" so much as it is, rather like Brighton Rock, a novel about amorality, seemingly written out of a curiosity about how to make an amoral character into a protagonist. I don't particularly like novels that set themselves that challenge, but this is at least a very good effort at performing such an experiment.