Lettre à mon juge (French Edition)

Act of Passion

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Paperback , pages.

Act of Passion

Published January 7th by Omnibus first published January 1st To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Tout Simenon, Tome 1 , please sign up.

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Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Adriana rated it really liked it May 28, Judie rated it liked it Aug 26, Matthieu Bob rated it really liked it May 31, Leprince rated it it was amazing May 31, Mirella Ducasteele rated it it was ok Jan 26, Le rated it really liked it Apr 11, Marc Deneau rated it it was amazing Jun 08, Ad Blankestijn rated it really liked it Mar 07, Alexandre Guay rated it it was amazing Aug 06, Bernard rated it really liked it Jul 25, Ottone added it Aug 26, Tom Soluble added it May 08, Auroremalet marked it as to-read Jun 03, 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. 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. 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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. I came to hate Charles. He is without a single sympathetic shard to his character. An utter dread builds in the reader at the prospect of what he might do next. Certainly death for poor Martine comes to seem preferable. Charles is a psycho, truly reprehensible. I didn't want to spend any more time with him and longed for the novel to end, but it didn't.

I think however that this was a flaw in the reader, who does not possess the requisite macabre fascination such fiction demands. This is good Simenon, though not his best. But then I've only read about eight novels or so out of four hundred, hardly a statistically reliable sample. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web.

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