The Cat

by Georges Simenon

Book Overview

Marguerite og Emile har begge haft hver deres at k mpe med i fortiden, og begge har v ret pr get af ensomhed i deres alderdom. S? da de finder hinanden er de sikre p?, at de har fundet lykken. Men... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156155494
• ISBN13: 9780156155496
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 182 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent, but a difficult subject.

The Cat is also one of the short psychological Simenon novels. It is a singularly unpleasant book. It tells the story of a couple in their 70s who stopped speaking to each other after killing each other's pets years ago. As difficult as the subject matter it shows Simenon's style to perfection-- short terse sentences, flat and sympathetic treatment of characters. An excellent example of his work, even if the plot means that it will never be one of my personal favorites.

Marital hatred (some may consider plot spoiling review)

In this 1967 novel (one of roughly 400 published before his 1973 retirement), Georges Simenon portrayed an elderly couple that had come to hate each other. It is not that they had been living together for decades. Both had outlived earlier spouses and wed eight years before. Marguerite fancies herself a fine lady. She still owns some buildings, though her father once owned the whole street, which is named for him. Emile was a working man who helped her with a burst pipe and stayed around. He dotes on a cat that Emile cannot stand for a number of reasons, including concern about her own pet, a parrot. While he is sick, she poisons the cat. He takes vengeance on the tail feathers of the parrot, worries about being poisoned himself, runs away (not very far to a room above the bar his sometimes sexual partner runs) for a while. Marguerite is humiliated by his departure and silently implores him to return, where they continue to prepare food separately and communicate only by notes. As the houses across the street (which her father once owned) are being loudly demolished, several time, "he almost spoke to her; he wanted to say something, anything, appeasing words. He realized that it was too late now and that neither of them could turn back." They are together until death doth them part. The novel is a portrait of savage marital disgust for each other, strongly ( but not entirely) slanted to the grievances of the man. Simenon seems to share Emil's view that "she needed to be unhappy, a victim of men's wickedness," forgetting no outrage to her refined sensibility and not recognizing any faults of her own. Husbands getting fed up and leaving was a recurrent theme for Simenon (M. Monde Vanishes). "The Cat" was filmed with Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret as a couple who had once loved each other, a past unlike the one Simenon supplied the characters.