Rouen, city in the north of France, setting for this probing 1939 psychological tale
Georges Simenon wrote 117 non-Maigret existential novels. I've posted reviews on 23 of their number. To list several: The Blue Room, Red Lights, Tropic Moon, Dirty Snow, In Case of Emergency. From my own reading, Uncle Charles Has Locked Himself In
is surely the most complex since the story focuses not only on Charles
but a good number of other men and women. This is the only Simenon where
I had to go back and read the novel a second time, pen in hand, ready
to fill in several family trees.
Uncle Charles is also
perhaps the most subtle Simenon, in the sense that the act propelling
the unfolding drama isn't a murder or catastrophe, but simply Charles
Dupeux returning home one evening to shut himself in his attic.
Why
would a forty-eight-year-old husband and father of four grown daughters
do such a thing? Initially, I thought Charles might have acted out of
rage, a man forced to spend his waking hours working as a bookkeeper for
his odious brother-in-law Henri - quite the sacrifice, considering we
learn Charles is skilled with his hands and enjoys pursuits bordering on
the artistic. Additionally, maybe Charles is rebelling against his
place within a suffocating, conventional middle-class family. However,
as more facts are disclosed, it becomes clear that there are other, less
obvious forces at work.
Simenon proves himself a master in the
way he provides telling details. For example, in the opening pages, when
their three daughters currently living at home - Mauricette, Camille,
and Lulu - leave for the evening, Laurence, Charles' wife, calls up to
him and asks her husband if he's trying to scare her or if he's gone
mad. Then she says, “You know, there's quite a difference between you
and Uncle Guillaume.” We're given the backstory: Guillaume (Charles'
brother) returned to the farm one evening from the horse market. While
his family was busy eating dinner, Guillaume hanged himself in the stall
next to the mare. The family discovered Guillaume had made a
fifteen-year-old girl pregnant, a girl who died trying to get rid of the
child. If he hadn't hanged himself, Guillaume knew he would have gone
to prison. This bit of family history also serves as foreshadowing; in
the final chapter, a member of the Dupeux family hangs themselves.
Likewise,
with the great author's quick character sketches. Here's Henri Dionnet,
Charles' obnoxious, rich brother-in-law, who runs the largest wholesale
grocery business in Rouen - a man of efficiency and business down to
his toes, rarely seen without his bowler, heavy black overcoat, and
umbrella. Henri's father had been a quarryman, and his brother a
stonemason, but Henri arrived in Rouen and shortly thereafter came to
know a gent by the name of Bonduel, who inherited a good bit of money.
Henri persuaded Bonduel to start a grocery business - Dionnet and
Bonduel - and some time thereafter, under shrouded circumstances,
Bonduel died. As Simenon writes: “The week after, Bonduel's name
disappeared from the front of the shop. In order not to waste the stock
of letterhead and invoices, the name was crossed out in red, and the
paper was used for several more years.” Wow! Such a clear picture of
Monsieur Dionnet in so few words.
With the quickest of Simenon strokes, we get to know many more women and
men. Yet, it is Charles who remains the most fascinating study. Why
does such a mild-mannered, seemingly meek individual act the way he
does? Can Charles be judged as a man of habit, one who is incapable of
dramatic change? Or, is there something darker going on with Charles,
including a quiet drive to extract a kind of revenge, even if that
revenge means the destruction of one or more people around him?
I urge you to give this Simenon a go, among the author's murkiest. 
Belgian author Georges Simenon, 1903-1989
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