der Beste. Nr 30 Non-Maigret, KEES POPINGA, unvergesslich, 1938erstmals veröffentlicht ( )

I've read one or two of the Maigret stories, but never expected Simenon to have produced something like this. A very modern psychological story, with a narrator you can never quite trust or quite believe, who is clearly deceiving himself - and maybe us? I would say more, but I don't want to spoil the discovery of how a book written in the 1930s could be so ahead of its time. ( )

Kees Popinga, a Dutch family man, loses his job at a ships chandler in Groningen through no fault of his own. Like a dog faced with an unexpectedly open door he bolts to freedom and goes off the rails, quickly. He kills a woman, flees to Paris, and taunts the police, even as they search for him. He spends his nights in seedy hotels with prostitutes because he can’t sleep well by himself. He frets about the quality of the press he’s getting.

Kees is convinced he’s smarter than the police, and everyone else actually. Getting swindled out of the only money he has is the start of a run of bad luck that is the beginning of the end of his freedom.

Georges Simenon has the ability to get to the bleak heart of his characters through their flaws and desires. Kees Popinga is such a character. ( )

Kees Popinga, un honorable padre de familia de Groninga, Holanda, aficionado al ajedrez, es un hombre sin complicaciones hasta el día en que su jefe le revela confidencialmente que la empresa está en quiebra y que él se prepara a huir no sin antes simular un suicidio. Para Popinga significa la ruina. Al día siguiente, alentado por una insospechada seguridad, abandona a esposa e hijos, y corre hacia Pamela, una bailarina, antigua entretenida de su jefe. Como ésta se le resiste y se burla de él, Popinga la estrangula y sube a uno de esos trenes que en otros tiempos miraba pasar con una mezcla de angustia y nostalgia, y huye a París. Allí conoce a una prostituta que intenta ocultarle, aunque muy pronto se da cuenta de que esa misma protección puede convertirse para él en una trampa. La policía intensificará su busca mientras los periódicos empiezan a dar de él una imagen que Popinga considera falsa y distorsionada. Un hecho tonto, absurdo, va a cambiar radicalmente, una vez más, el rumbo de su vida.

in which julius de coster the younger gets drunk at the little saint-george and the impossible suddenly breaches the dikes of everyday life. ( )