Una vida nueva

by Georges Simenon

Maurice Dudon, un extraño personaje que lleva una vida aislada es atropellado por un coche. El conductor le paga el hospital. Confiado a los cuidados de Anne-Marie, una encantadora enfermera con la que se casa, conoce un nuevo destino. De un personaje corriente y vulgar, de un hombre cualquiera, Simenon hace una figura literaria inolvidable, que inquietará y emocionará al lector, haciéndole salir del mundo de sus preocupaciones y costumbres para sumergirse en el de otra persona anteriormente ajena a él. Profundo conocedor del alma humana, calificado por un importante crítico como el Dostoiesvky de la literatura francesa moderna, cada novela de Simenon renueva y certifica su genio. Así, en «Vida nueva», de un personaje corriente y vulgar, de un hombre cualquiera, Georges Simenon hace una figura literaria inolvidable, que inquietará y emocionará al lector, haciéndole salir del mundo de sus preocupaciones y costumbres para sumergirse en el de otra persona anteriormente ajena a él.

Genres: Fiction

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 – 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known as the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret.
Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.

Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.

He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain.

During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)).

Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as La neige était sale (1948) or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981).

In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man is struck by a car and his life is changed by the experience, or maybe it is not changed at all. The 'victim' of the accident is something of an unreliable narrator in that he describes his life and all the people in it as being dreadful, yet when each character is introduced they don't seem to be at all bad. His attitude makes him a very hard person to feel any sympathy for, he has a strange combination of arrogance and insecurity, making his complaints both irritating and perplexing. He has always felt as though he has been excluded from life, from friendships, even from his own family. I'm not so sure exactly why he feels this way. After the accident he is presented with a number of opportunities that would appear to be paths to improvements in his life, yet the complaints continue. Which I suppose is the point that Simenon is making here, maybe the title should have a question mark at the end, but that would be giving too much away. Not an easy read at all, I'd recommend this only to those who are familiar with the writing of Simenon and his somewhat existentialist viewpoint.

[John Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly strange and somewhat disturbing novel. Of course I liked it. I need a shower though.

[Budge Burgess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange Simenon - I read it because it was mentioned in, I think, one of Burley's Wycliffe novels. Famous for his Maigrets. Simenon wrote over 400 books and Inspector Maigret appears in only 75 of them. Now, I'm a big fan of Maigret, but I've never imagined I would have liked Simenon, the man.
He was Belgian, but seemed keen to escape his Flemish Belgian roots and identify himself as French. He moved to Paris, he remained in France during the Occupation - there's no evidence he resisted the Germans in any way, there are unanswered questions about how much he might have collaborated with them. Certainly, with Liberation, he moved to the USA (and later Switzerland).
He famously claimed to have sex with over 2000 women, most of them prostitutes - his consumption of commercially available sex seems to have taken place on an almost industrial scale. And I get worrying insights into his attitude to women in this book. Did he have fantasies about seducing nurses?
A reclusive, perverse man ends up in hospital because of an accident. He's able to take advantage of the accident to improve his situation. An exploration of guilt? We have a rich man who can expiate guilt by simply buying off anyone who can produce the evidence. We have the hero, visiting a priest to confess to sins he commits on a weekly, routine basis ... he has no intention of changing his sinful routines, or his confessional routines ... penance is routine, reassuring, endlessly repeatable ... routine.
And his life is changed through no intention or action of his own. It's a perverse male fantasy, being allocated a private nurse who will fulfil his fantasies. He'll find new ways of sinning, new routines, he'll drift back to making confessions.
And I'm left looking at the portraits of women Simenon constructs. They're perverse. Disturbing even. His male characters are far better drawn, or at least more equitably drawn. Simenon could look into characters, could construct creatures for his novels which are vastly superior to most. Certainly his Maigrets are light years in advance of the simplistic nonsense churned out by the English cosy writers of the 1930s and beyond.
But the characterisation in this novel is perverse.

[Mikee · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Simenon books all (mostly) have the same trait. Whatever they do to change who they are, and their prospects, is all for naught. Unlike reptiles, humans can’t change their skin.

I wished very hard that this was not the case in this book. A sympathetic character is hit by a car, spends a long time in the hospital, falls in love with his nurse, and is “adopted” by the driver of the car, who lands a good settlement on him, as well as a new career. All is good, except that his catholic upbringing wrings all the joy out of his life. Too bad."

[Jul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This miserable novel rly managed to portray catholic guilt and human made misery. That I'll admit, also that Simenon is a gifted author, as he rly stirred my emotions. Sadly tho, those were not good emotions. His way of discribing sexual acts made me nauseous, they seemed vile and gory. I hated every single character and this book was not enjoyable in the slightest. Enjoyable was the way this piece left so much unaid it seemed almost like a grotesque poem about how since u chose the way u live, u have no right to complain about ur life.