Three Rooms in Manhattan
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946) is a 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon. It tells the story of François Combe, a famous actor who has fled France and who starts an affair with the destitute Kay in New York. It was adapted for film in 1965.
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Plot
François Combe, a famous actor in France, has been living in New York for six months, where he came for a second breath and especially to stifle the scandal caused by his wife's affair who left him for a very young man.
Fleeing his loneliness, he meets Kay in the middle of the night in a bar. They get acquainted: Kay tells François that she has no place to live. François feels attracted to her, he tries to help her. In a hotel room, they make love by try to forget everything around them and the setbacks of their own existence. The next day, they stay together, alive and wandering as night owls through the streets of New York. François begins to be jealous of Kay's past, and especially of the men she has known. He learns that Kay was married to an ambassador, Count Larski, whom she left, along with her daughter, to live with a gigolo.
On the third day of their meeting, François leads Kay to his own room. There, he in turn tells her that he was famous in Paris and that he left everything to come to New York where he leads a lonely and relatively miserable existence. Kay, who loves him sincerely, tries to make him happy, but Francois doubts her as much as he does; he is constantly afraid of losing her. One day, he makes her a terrible scene, odiously questions her about her past, and even goes so far as to hit her.
The couple goes to a third room: the one occupied by Kay before she met François. She shared it with a married friend who had a lover. The husband, warned, had taken his wife and taken the keys, and Kay had found herself on the street. It is now that François will finally understand how badly he had judged Kay. A week later, she is called to the emergency room in Mexico City, where her daughter is seriously ill. When she returns, François had the revelation of the depth of his love; unable to wait for him, he cheated on her with a passing friend, who for him was just another absent figure of Kay. Kay forgives him and a new life can begin for them. == Particular aspects of the novel Importance of the psychological analysis, supported by the little action that the story includes. Importance of urban wandering, which is in fact the plot of the novel.
Description of the work
Space and time
Manhattan (New York), Mexico. Contemporary time period.
Characters
- François Combe, known as Franck, theater actor, temporarily unemployed, married, separated from his wife, also an actress, 48 years old
- Kathleen Miller, known as Kay, Austrian, divorced, one daughter, age 32
