Red Lights (novel)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Feux rouges (1953, Red Lights) is a 'roman dur' by Belgian writer Georges Simenon.
The novel tells the story of a married couple who, while driving to pick up their kids from a summer camp, get into a fight. She, angry, gets out of the car and decides to do the journey by bus. She is subsequently raped by an escaped convict who is later picked up and helped by her drunk husband.
The eight chapters are written using the third-person narrative mode.
Plot
Steve, who suffers from his wife’s professional success, protective attitude, and most importantly, an inability to “get off the rails,” sometimes uses alcohol to put a little fantasy into his existence. This is the case on the day he and Nancy go to pick up their children at Walla-Walla Holiday Camp. Along the road Steve stops their car in front of several bars. But soon an altercation arises between him and his wife who decides to take the bus.
So Steve has a night of freedom that he spends drinking. Leaving a bar, he finds Sid Halligan, an inmate escaped from prison, in his car. Glad to meet in the latter an alter ego who is not a coward and who is proud to act manly, he helps the man to escape the police. But soon after, a new excess of alcohol makes him completely unconscious.
When he awakens, he realizes that he is alone, that he has been stripped of his wallet. In a cafeteria, the waitress tells him that the newspapers have reported that a woman has been attacked. It is Nancy who, raped, is in shock. Steve also learns that the assailant is none other than Sid.
At the hospital, Steve and Nancy rediscover themselves and prepare to begin a life marked by a new and deeper understanding.
English language editions
This novel and The Watchmaker of Everton, both translated by Norman Denny, were published together in 1955 by Hamish Hamilton as Danger Ahead.
It was reissued by New York Review Books in 2006, with an introduction by Anita Brookner.
Article connexe
Liste des œuvres de Georges Simenon
