Where is the humanity of being the worst person, in the worst place, at the worst time, doing the worst things? Dirty Snow (aka: The Snow is Dirty) by Georges Simenon is a bleak, ugly experience by design. Frank is a 19-year-old piece of human trash who lives in some unnamed European city devoid of beauty. It is the middle of some kind of fascist occupation, wherein murder, human trafficking, and weapon sales go ignored while accidentally passing off a counterfeit bill can result in long-term imprisonment or torture.

For approximately 200 pages we are at Frank’s side, and in his head. He commits some low-level and high-level crimes against humanity, and tromps through the snow glowering at every person who crosses his path. And yet, something about the reading experience aligns with what we know of humanity. Dirty Snow was written in 1946, with Simenon only having left Occupied France the year before – just before the War ended. One can only imagine what it would be like to immediately set out to write a crime novel set in a version of the city only just vacated which was occupied by a Fascist regime. There’s something true, nightmarish, and compelling about Simenon’s Dirty Snow.
( )

(Read in French)

I downloaded and starting reading this because somehow I had confused Simenon and Patrick Modiano in my head - I was about 100 pages in when I realized that this wasn’t the kind of book I thought it would be, and figured I’d just finish it for French practice anyway.

It kinda struck me as a second rate L’Etranger, taking that books nihilistic dread and turning it into a kind of set piece for a very inconsequential crime story. The finest scene was the break in and murder and the psychological writing about the days that followed where our main man Frank, so detached from any kind of healthy social connections tries to tamp down the part of his humanity that makes him feel guilt. But in contrast to the aforementioned Camus or Crime and Punishment, this murder is merely a plot point, lacking the pathos and depth of those great books. ( )

Simenon creates a character so despicable that it is impossible to feel pity, a pure sociopath in the mold of [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1506091612p2/957894.jpg]’s [b:The Stranger|49552|The Stranger|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349927872l/49552._SY75_.jpg|3324344]. The same existential angst leads the anti-hero to self-actualize himself through brutality and violence, all the while feeling almost nothing. It is telling that he hates the word destiny preferring to think a person makes his own path and that destiny plays no part. Coincidence is allowed, but not destiny.

The whole thing takes place in some unnamed occupied territory after WWII. It appears more Soviet occupied than one of the Western Allies, but is never explicitly stated. Vienna seems a good guess. It’s not really important.

This review sux. Maybe I’ll work on it later. (Maybe not) ( )

A Snow Job
Review of the Penguin Books paperback edition (November 3, 2016) of a new translation* by Howard Curtis of the French language original 'La neige était sale' (orig. 1948)

The Snow Was Dirty was the most disappointing of the several Simenon "hard novels" that I've read in my 2022 deep dive into the works of the prolific Belgium novelist. It takes place in Occupied France during the Second World War. After a first third of the book that showed the descent of despicable sociopathic punk Frank Friedmaier into increasingly reckless and debauched levels of crime, the youth is finally arrested by the German occupation authorities and held in an improvised prison formed out of a schoolhouse for the final two thirds.

His German interrogators are seemingly oblivious to Frank's more serious crimes of murder and assault and are instead only curious about how he came into possession of marked currency bills which were only available to the German authorities. Frank is silent about it being his payoff for stealing watches for a German General with a casual murder thrown in. He is in fact mostly silent throughout the last portion of the book until the kindness and forgiveness of his brothel keeper mother and two of his neighbour victims finally bring about his remorse and acceptance of his fate.

This latter section of the book seemed to pass in real time with hardly any drama or suspense aside from wondering when the Germans were going to finally clue in as to whom they were dealing with. The fact that he was arrested in possession of a firearm stolen from one of his Occupier victims did not apparently signal anything to them.

Anyway, it might have been a [3] for the first part, but the tedium of the rest dragged this down to a [1.5] i.e. midway on the GR scale of 1 'did not like it' to 2 'it was ok'. Oddly this was 304 pages long, about twice the length of the average Simenon novel. The added length did not seem at all worthwhile.

See poster at https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzRiMWI5ZjUtYjdkOS00MmY3LWFiNzAtMWU1NGEw...
Promotional poster for the French language film adaptation of 'The Snow Was Dirty.' Image sourced from IMDb.

After reading the first dozen and the final dozen or so of the Simenon Maigret novels this year, I've now read a half-dozen or so of the non-Maigrets. Many of the non-Maigret books are being translated into English for the first time and it seems like there are quite a few yet to be done.

The Snow Was Dirty is the 7th of my readings of Georges Simenon's romans durs** (French: hard novels) which was his personal category for his non-Chief Inspector Maigret fiction. This is like Graham Greene, who divided his work into his "entertainments" and his actual "novels." Similar to Greene, the borders between the two areas are quite flexible as we are often still dealing with crime and the issues of morals and ethics. Simenon's romans durs are definitely in the noir category though, as compared to the sometimes lighter Maigrets where the often cantankerous Chief Inspector provides a solution and the guilty are brought to justice.

Trivia and Links
* La neige était sale has been previously translated into English several times. The earlier translations had titles such as The Snow Was Black, Dirty Snow, and The Stain on the Snow.

** There is a limited selection of 100 books in the Goodreads' Listopia of Simenon's romans durs which you can see here. Other sources say there are at least 117 of them, such as listed at Art and Popular Culture and in the Library Thing "Non-Maigret Series" listing.

La neige était sale was adapted for film in 1954 (some sources give 1952 or 1953) directed by Argentinian Luis Saslavsky, with actor Daniel Gélin as Frank Friedmaier. A French language excerpt (without subtitles) can be seen at Daily Motion.

There is a French language plot summary for La neige était sale at the Tout Simenon (All of Simenon) website, which you can read here (spoilers obviously). ( )

John Banville rec. Dark, claustrophobic wartime existential noir. ( )