Book Review: "The Snow Was Dirty" by Georges Simenon

I am trying to read more Georges Simenon because of the fact I have enjoyed certain books by him and yet hated others with a passion. For example: my opinions of good books such as “The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By” and “The Blue Room” are better than those I hold on books such as “The Mahé Circle” and well, this one. This noir-like book definitely reflects Georges Simenon’s more criminal fiction such as his murder mystery series and yet, it does not initiate the same reaction. It was not as exciting and was tinged with existentialism, except for the latter part the fact that it does not excite the senses as the former books do. When I say this I mean that after a few pages, this book can appear dry and often a bit too dry to keep interested in. I assure you that if you were to split the book into thirds, the second third is the worst but the first and third sections are somewhat better with the beginning possibly the best you’re going to get out of the book.

Let’s now take a look at some quotations from the book that I thought were pretty good in the way they display to us the extent of quality in Simenon’s writing:

“As far as Frank is concerned, his real loss of virginity was no big deal either. After all, he was in the right place. For others, it is a major event which they still talk about years later, adding embellishments, like Kromer with his strangled girl in the barn. For Frank, killing his first man at the age of nineteen is a loss of virginity no more remarkable than the first. And as with the first, it is unpremeditated. It just happens. It is as if a moment comes when it is both indispensable and natural to make a decision that has in fact been made long before. Nobody has urged him to do it. Nobody has laughed at him. Only idiots let themselves be influenced by their friends. For weeks, months even he has been saying to himself, feeling a kind of inferiority inside, “I have to try”. Not in a fight. That isn’t his style. In his mind, in order for it to count, it has to be done in cold blood. And just now, the opportunity presented itself. Was it because he was watching out for it that it seemed like an opportunity?”

Obviously, when we look at this we see an incredible amount of atmospheric build-up that we just do not really get throughout the rest of the book. Simenon’s language in this section is very similar to the book “The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By” and the similarities are so great that you can actually pinpoint this quotation out if you’ve already read the other book I was talking about.

“Through the little windowpanes, he is watching for Holst to arrive. It is because of Holst that he came out because he wants to look him in the face. Because the tram driver got back at midnight the previous night, and it was a Monday, he will leave home at about 2.30 today in order to be at his depot by three. What were the old men talking about when he came in? He doesn’t care. One of them is a cobbler and has a little show a little further down the street, but due to the lack of raw materials, he does hardly any work these days. He must be eyeing Frank’s shoes, sizing them up, indignant that the young man doesn’t even bother to protect them with galoshes.”

This entire book has a very noir-like vibe to it but I think that the very best thing about this book has to be the atmosphere that is created in the first third of the novel. Simenon’s key is often his creepy and uncomfortable atmospheres that, even though don’t appear as much later on, I would say in the first half is basically staying true to Simenon’s other novels which are, in my opinion, a lot better. Just go and read the others and you will see what I mean.