Three Bedrooms in Manhattan | George Simeon

Georges Simenon was a prolific Belgian writer, born in Liege in 1903. He was best known for creating the character of Detective Jules Maigret and published more than 400 novels and short stories.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan is not one of seventy-five in the Maigret series, but rather a stand-alone study of a new relationship. It was first published in French as Trois Chambres a Manhattan, then in English by the New York Review of Books in 2003 and this version was translated by Marc Romano and Lawrence Blochman.

The novel, which Simeon wrote in 1946 during his ten-year stay in the United States, has a forty-eight-year-old down-and-out actor named François Combe as protagonist. One morning at 03:00 Francois wakes up and starts to wander the streets of New York. A detailed, observational account of the nearly empty streets, the woman he meets in a diner and their fragile relationship over the next few days follows.

What immediately grabs you about Simeon’s writing is the way in which he evokes the melancholy and quiet of the city. He writes simply, but beautifully, instilling the slightest of emotions with seemingly little effort.

“On the corner, its high windows lit violently, aggressively, with boastful vulgarity, was a sort of long glass cage where people could be seen as dark smudges and where he went in just so as not to be alone.”

Newly divorced, alone and frustrated with his lack of job prospects as an actor, he starts a conversation with Kay, a woman at the counter. In quiet desperation he patiently waits for her to finish her meal and smoke her cigarette and after an hour the two head out into the city streets. When they reach the grimy Lotus Hotel, they find their home for the next few days.

Neither knows what lies ahead and both take great pains in trying to live in the moment, avoid any form of commitment and savour in the simplicity of a new, undefined relationship. Nonetheless, they are confronted with the same insecurities and doubts of a long-term relationship within a much shorter, condensed time span. Both have only each other to hold on to. Kay no longer has a place to live and Francois lost his family, profession and country. They are merely people drifting through time who happened to collide.

“Both knew that from now on they’d cling to each other even harder, not as lovers, but as two creatures who’d been alone and at last, after a long time, had found someone to walk with.”

The love story of Francois and Kay is by no means the perfect romance. He experiences fits of jealousy, convinced that she’s lying to him for no apparent reason and he also resorts to violence more than once. Francois does come across as self-absorbed and temperamental, while Kay acts as the submissive woman who is only there to please her man. The same situation set in 2020 would, in all likelihood, be questioned and not brushed off so easily.

Nevertheless, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan is worth reading for it’s stripped down, visual story-telling and quiet, dream-like construction of a developing relationship.

Three bedrooms in Manhattan is published by Penguin Classics who provided me with a review copy via NetGalley. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan was translated by Marc Romano and Lawrence Blochman.