The Blue Room by Georges Simenon

First published in France in 1963; published in translation in the UK by Penguin Classics on January 1, 2015; Penguin Classics U.S. digital edition forthcoming in 2016

Tense and surprising, The Blue Room is the account of a man named Tony who is being interrogated and will soon be brought to trial for a crime. For most of the novel, the reader is uncertain of the crime's victim and of Tony's guilt or innocence.

What the reader does learn is that Tony had an affair with the grocer's wife, that the grocer's wife was deeply in love with Tony, and that Tony was careless in the way he responded to the woman's affections. When he answers "of course" to the question "Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me?" he does not realize that his offhand remark, tossed out without a moment's thought, will have profound implications. It is a moment that returns to haunt his memory again and again throughout the course of the brief novel.

Georges Simenon was a master of psychological suspense. In the spare prose of a defeated man -- defeated by life, defeated by himself -- Tony examines his life, ponders the interrogator's questions, and never quite manages to voice his inevitable regret. Simenon creates a vivid sense of place (even of the blue hotel room in which Tony and the grocer's wife make love), captures the textures and scents of the world, and makes each character meaningful.

The Blue Room is a haunting novel that teaches powerful lessons. The crime(s), once revealed, are less important than the real crime -- to act for one's own pleasure, to speak without thinking, without regard to the consequences that selfish acts and words have upon others, and ultimately, upon oneself.

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