The Engagement (New York Review Books) [Paperback]

Georges Simenon (Author), Anna Moschovakis (Translator), John Gray (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007 | Series: New York Review Books

On the outskirts of Paris, a prostitute is found murdered in a vacant lot. In a seedy apartment house nearby lives pasty, fat Mr. Hire. Mr. Hire, who earns his living through a petty postal scam, is a convicted pornographer, a peeping Tom, and, once a week, the unlikely star of a Parisian bowling club, where people think he works for the police. He is a faceless man of regular habits who keeps to himself and gives his neighbors the creeps. After the murder, Mr. Hire’s concierge points a finger at him: he was out late the night of the crime. The police have the suspect under 24-hour surveillance. They are only waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake and give himself away.

Except that creepy Mr. Hire is in fact an innocent man, whose only mistake is to have fallen head-over-heels in love with the wrong girl.

One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon’s extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

First published in 1933, this new English translation of a short, bleak psychological drama from Simenon (1903–1989), creator of Inspector Maigret (Lock 14, etc.), dispassionately describes the fate of the odd Mr. Hire, a reclusive middle-aged man whose life of dull routine begins an inevitable slide into disaster when a prostitute is brutally murdered near his apartment in a Paris suburb. Guilty only of a slightly disreputable occupation, a voyeuristic fascination and an unusual physical appearance, Hire inadvertently seals his fate with mundane, unremarkable observations and suggestions. His concierge brings him to the attention of the police. Though Hire is aware of the net being spread for him and tries to escape it, eventually, like a swimmer struggling against an undertow, he's gradually exhausted and sucked further away from the safety of the shore. This is a quietly compelling story with no hero, no villain and no justice—just the inevitability of fate. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

This is an early Simenon, originally published in 1933. It has never appeared in the U.S., probably because it lacks the charm and comfort of the author's celebrated Maigret series. Simenon wrote many non-Maigrets, most of which fell in the category of "roman durs," the psychological crime novel. This one fits there, too, but its bleakness and excruciatingly slow pace may make it tough going. The antihero, the tubby Mr. Hire, is almost as slow moving as the novel's pace. Hire doesn't attract sympathy, which would be fine if the lack of sympathy was a bit more interesting. Unfortunately, the accounts of his sitting in his rented rooms are more dull than poignant, and the story of how he tries to spice up his life through Peeping Tomism is dispiriting. But did he kill a prostitute whose body was found near his apartment? Police are convinced he did, but the reader doesn't know for sure. Simenon fans will be thrilled that a "new" novel has been unearthed, but less-committed readers should give this one a pass. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172280
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172285
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NYRB brings out another of simenon's great psychological novels, March 4, 2007

By 

d e ford jr (chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Engagement (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

Originally published in 1933, this slim volume already showcases Simenon's unique brand of realism, which eschews easy humanism in favor of a punishingly bleak moral universe. The story centers on Mr. Hire, the middle-aged son of working class immigrant parents. When a prostitute is murdered in his neighborhood, Hire's asocial habits, petty criminal record and ethically dubious profession leads the police to his door. Fed by the suspicions of vindictive neighbors, detectives tail him relentlessly, waiting for Hire to slip up and yield any evidence linking him to the crime. Readers of Simenon's so called 'romans durs' will find The Engagement to be an excellent early example of its type. Furthermore, the brief afterword by John Gray provides informative context for the novel as well as evidence of a rare instance of autobiographical sourcing.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When the Internal and External Collide, March 26, 2007

By 

Dash Manchette - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Engagement (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

When a prostitute is murdered in an abandoned lot, all eyes look towards Mr. Hire as the suspect. The reader can certainly understand why. Hire makes his income in a petty postal scam and his main hobby is peeping on the woman across the courtyard as she undresses. His past is no better, with a conviction for petty sex offenses and some time in prison. No wonder the guy is in the crosshairs.

Yet THE ENGAGEMENT is one of Simenon's roman durs (hard novels) with more of a noir edge to them. Hire is innocent of the crime but, as is true for the roman durs, hardly innocent in any other application of the term. Hire's apparently empty internal world collides with the external as Hire realizes that some others, specifically the police, do not consider him to be as inconsequential as he thought. The scene in which Hire discovers at the train station that he is being watched and followed was among the most simple yet powerful scenes I have encountered of a character's horror at having his comfortable little world disturbed through no fault of one's own.

Despite his initial shock, Hire soon comes to enjoy being the center of someone's attention and starts showing off for the detectives on his tail. This excitement is heightened when the girl on whom Hire peeps starts showing some romantic interest. But in a morally vacuous world, it is all a ruse. Hire is being played for the sap. Even if the police knew of Hire's innocence, it is questionable whether they would care. They show the same apathy towards the lives of others as everyone else and seem less concerned with nabbing the real murderer than they are in getting the case behind them. They are just playing a different role in the game.

In his roman durs, Simenon shows no concern for issues of right and wrong. The amorality of the world simply is a given in which people are thrust and left to their own devices. It is an interesting world to visit while hoping we never find ourselves as its tenants.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Even from Mr. Hire's room, the goose bumps on her skin were visible.", June 7, 2007

By 

John Sollami (Stamford, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Engagement (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

No question that for Simenon, less is more, as this enormously talented writer in "The Engagement" sketches out the essential lines of his protagonists and their rather drab and robotic lives with such skill that he engages us at every turn. What's real to Simenon is desire, greed, and death. There's little room here for sentiment, and if you're looking for a sweet confection, you've definitely entered the wrong door.

Simenon has created a "modern" twentieth-century man, Mr. Hire, who really has no spiritual or moral center. He simply is a collection of habits and fears, spiced with perverse self-flagellating pleasures and one great but rather ridiculous skill. His alienation from society, which itself is presented as crude and hard and bordering on a violent mob, is sad and almost understandable, considering his dysfunctionality may have a basis in the gross nature of those who surround him. Yet his one soft spot is the highly sexual dairy maid, Alice, who lives directly across from him. Her little piece of paradise is so close that he can see right into her windows.

So goes this Hitchcockian plot as Mr. Hire's robotic life is disrupted by this seductress and by the police. Underlying this plot is Simenon's writing machinery, which carries with it a valueless worldview. The author is really telling us we all amount to very little in the end: a collection of habits, enactments of our desires, and vain hopes for a better life. Why we are who we are is not of any significance to what we do while we are here in this life.

I found this work to be extraordinary in its philosophical and psychological implications. Simenon was way ahead of his time as a writer and thinker. Not only that, his selection of detail and his ability to draw up whole scenes through the skillful use of the five senses could teach many a writer how to make the page come alive.