Dirty Snow, by Georges Simenon

A little boy, born to a prostitute, raised in a village by others and only infrequently visited by his mother. How can we expect good things to come of this? As the story opens we find Frank, now a late teen, living with his mother who runs a whorehouse out of her apartment in German-occupied France during the Second World War. Frank doesn't seem to have young male angst or teenage burdens of identity and acceptance. He is dangerously unfettered - the German soldiers, police, older men who frequent the taverns, mother's customers, prostitutes, Holst and his daughter, Sissy, who live across the hall all have potential to act as either physical or psychological influences on Frank. Yet, he has little or none. He only seeks the companionship of bad people who lurk in bars, who steal and connive, but doesn't try to impress. Frank does bad things - kills a man for no good reason and takes his gun. Kills a woman he knew as a child so that he may steal her watches. But his actions do not reverberate in his conscience; Simenon spends little time in allowing Frank to rationalize his actions. Does he have a developed amygdala? In many ways he is Camus' stranger - amoral, sociopath. However, one cannot help but to blame his environment. After being imprisoned for passing stolen currency, it is a woman in an apartment window keeping house in a building across from the prison that consumes Frank. He weaves a narrative of the woman's life, married with a small baby. We see in his fantasies his lost childhood and lost adulthood. He will never now have the opportunity to marry a woman and have a child of his own. And the time has past for a loving, nurturing childhood. Sissy, from across the hall, was Frank's one chance for love. And it is her love, or expression of love, that serves as the pinnacle, culmination, of his life. Somewhat ironically, it is his mother who seemingly spends more time visiting Frank and sending him stuff while in prison, now too late to make a difference. I don't read this tale only as an existential exercise. Nor do I think of Frank as a complete sociopath. The tale and its lessons are found in the simple grit and poverty of war and occupation and how a young person without guidance is at great risk of failing to develop a proper sense of self and conscience.