Monsieur Monde Vanishes

By Georges Simenon

Book Overview

Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590170962
• ISBN13: 9781590170960
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.4" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Psycological novel

This is a great book but one would never read it if one merely read the back cover copy which is totally inaccurate -- so inaccurate that one suspects the writer of the copy has never read the book. I have read M. Monde Vanishes many times in French (La Fuite de M. Monde) and given dozens copies of this excellent English translation to friends and acquaintances. M. Monde learns, in the course of his adventures after he flees his unhappy existence, that true freedom comes from inside -- one does not have to tear one's life apart, one can to change one's perspective. In Simenon's usual concise, brilliant style.

"Let's take a boat to Bermuda

Let's take a plane to Saint Paul. Let's take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack, Let's get away from it all." I have to admit that Frank Sinatra version of "Let's Get Away From it All" kept entering my consciousness as I read George Simenon's "Monsieur Monde Vanishes". The upbeat nature of the song is not remotely like the dark, reflective tone of Simenon's story but if you have ever sat in your office on a dreary day or sat in your home on a humdrum evening and just wondered what it would be like to just walk away from your life and start fresh somewhere else then you will have some understanding and, perhaps, sympathy for a man who wakes up one morning and decides to get away from it all. Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, almost pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "Monsieur Monde Vanishes" is an excellent place to start. As with virtually all his protagonists in these hard stories, Monde is a stolid, middle-class member of the establishment. Based in Paris, Monde runs the family export/import business. His is a life of regular habits, from the time he wakes up, through his work day and then through the evening. He is married (a second wife) and has children. Beneath this surface regularity lies a yearning to get away, to just leave everything behind and as the book opens Monde does just that. The rest of the novel explores Monde's journey, his new identity, the places he goes (the French coast) and the people he meets. He sheds his stolid identity like someone sheds their clothing at night and finds himself in a world entirely different from the one he leaves behind. The reader witnesses this transformation in what can be best described as something of a voyeuristic fashion. Simenon's hard novels are often referred to as psychological novels but I find that term a bit misleading. Simenon does not analyze. He does not delve deep into his protagonists' minds. He presents the reader with a slice of the human condition and lets the reader deal with the implications, the psychoanalysis if you like. They do offer glimpses into his protagonists' lives even though (or perhaps because) he does not fill in the blanks for you. His charac

A Wonderful Imaginary Diversion

A good friend of mine recommended Simenon books to me. This story is about a successful, middle-aged man who, obsessed with pursuing another life, one day decides to remove himself from everything that he has called his own. Leaving no trace of himself, he uproots himself and heads off in no particular direction. As he continues on his adventure, he encounters a number of enemies and companions all of whom help him realize a new self-awareness. But in the midst of this new comfort, his old life invades. He must then decide not only which life to embrace, but which self he will be. Though this is the only book I've read so far from Georges Simenon, I'm certain it will not be the last. I appreciated his ability to write with a great economy of words and yet penetrate deep into my imagination. His style is simple, his story is believable, and the questions he raises are not easy to answer. All around, a good, challenging book. For a full review go to my blog in my screen name and click on the Readings category

Beautifully understated, impressively human

Norbert Monde, a fourth-generation bourgeois Parisian businessman, "comes to his senses" on the afternoon of his forty-eighth birthday, withdraws 300,000 francs from his bank account, and promptly vanishes, abandoning his second wife, gay son, and money-grubbing daughter to their own devices. He surfaces in Marseilles where he is quickly drawn into a domestic crisis at a hotel and winds up living a new life among gamblers, drunks and prostitutes in Nice. He's happy, for a while, in realizing his lifelong ambition to be nobody other than a man in the street. But when his work at a nightclub brings his first wife, Therese, into his orbit, Monsieur Monde finds himself drawn back into the world of moral responsibility. Beautifully understated and impressively human, Simenon's take on the familiar "walking out on your life" tale is one of the better examples. In its empathy for the desperation of middle-class life, and for a man whose childhood values have fed into a lifetime of limited scope, it reminded me of that slim European classic, Patrick Suskind's novella "The Pigeon".