The Family Lie  

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Malempin (1940) is a roman dur by Georges Simenon.

Contents

Summary

Dr. Malempin decides to take his family on vacation to the Midi. It is his last day of work at the hospital and he is busy, excited about the upcoming departure. But when he returns home, he finds Bilot, his youngest son, suffering from a malignant diphtheria. As he watches over his son, he is struck by the look in the child's eyes as he wonders what memory he will have of him later. From then on, Malempin begins to reflect on his past: how did the image of his own father form in him and could the same thing happen to his son? He then begins to relive his life in a journal that he starts to write. Interspersed with frequent flashbacks to the present that trace the evolution of Bilot's illness, the story of Édouard's youth in the Charente countryside is built up little by little, one memory leading to another. It is especially his mother and her family who marked him, with the great-uncle Tesson married to a much younger woman, Élise, whom his parents visited every Sunday in Saint-Jean-d'Angély, often for selfish reasons. The mother Malempin, born Tesson, daughter of a ruined notary, was repulsed by this humiliation; but her husband, a small farmer, did not earn much...

One day, after a visit to the Malempins, Tesson disappears. We will never know under what circumstances or what happened to this unsympathetic usurer. Questioned by the police, the Malempin mother cheats in one of her answers, in full view of Édouard. The latter is entrusted to his aunt Élise, to whom he feels attracted, during the weeks when the justice system investigates his parents. The affair turned out to be over and Édouard continued his studies in Saint-Jean-d'Angély. From then on, he lived with his aunt who, thanks to her inheritance, tried to prepare a future for him.

Elise ends up remarrying a man who mistreats her to the point of insanity and dies in an asylum. Shortly thereafter, the death of Édouard's father leaves the family in misery. However, thanks to Élise's foresight, a scholarship allows Édouard to continue his studies.

Malempin's diary ends with Bilot's recovery and a new visit to the hospital before the promised vacation.

Special aspects of the novel

A first-person narrative in the form of a diary in which childhood memories alternate with current events, the latter centered on the illness of the narrator's son. As for Malempin's recollections, they are largely concerned with the family's unraveling.

Book details

Space and time frame

Space

Paris. References to Arcey and Saint-Jean-d'Angély (Charente-Maritime).

Time

Contemporary era.

The characters

Main character

Edouard Malempin. Doctor in a hospital in Paris. Married, two sons aged 11 and 8. Middle age.

Other characters

  • Jérôme, known as Bilot, second son of Malempin
  • Jeanne, his wife
  • Arthur Malempin, Édouard's father, farmer at Arcey
  • Françoise, his mother (she is 32 years old in Edouard's recollections)
  • Guillaume, Edouard's younger brother
  • Tesson, Françoise Malempin's uncle, former lawyer
  • Elise, wife of Tesson, the same age as Françoise.





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