A review by furfff
The Long Exile by Georges Simenon

4.0

Really liked this one. Fairly long for a Simenon book, in terms of both page count and how it feels. It's a bit of a journey, sometimes almost arduous, but my guess is that might have almost been the point. The long exile that the title refers to here could be seen really as just one, any, individual life, even though the protagonist is Joseph (Jef) Mittel. The book has this feeling of endlessly fleeing from one place to the next and yet at the same time, eternal stasis and encumbrance. Each major relationship (particularly the love/lust/friendship triangle of Jef/Charlotte/Mops) in the book also has this conflict and dichotomy to it: at different points in the book each is the other's salvatoin or damnation.
Not an easy or breezy book, and not even a perfect book, but a really interesting one.