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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



The Snow Was Dirty

by
Georges Simenon


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase The Snow Was Dirty


Title: The Snow Was Dirty
Author: Georges Simenon
Genre: Novel
Written: 1948 (Eng. 2016)
Length: 289 pages
Original in: French
Availability: The Snow Was Dirty - US
The Snow Was Dirty - UK
The Snow Was Dirty - Canada
La neige était sale - Canada
La neige était sale - France
Der Schnee war schmutzig - Deutschland
La neve era sporca - Italia
La nieve estaba sucia - España
from: Bookshop.org (US)
  • French title: La neige était sale
  • Translated by Howard Curtis
  • Previously translated as The Snow was Black by Louise Varèse (1950), The Stain on the Snow by John Petrie (1953), and Dirty Snow by Marc Romano and Louise Varèse (2003)
  • La neige était sale was made into a film in 1954, directed by Luis Saslavsky

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Our Assessment:

A- : horribly grim but very well done

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
The Guardian A 11//2020 Sam Jordison
The Independent* . 27/8/2011 Brandon Robshaw
The NY Times Book Rev.* . 30/4/1950 R.Fueloep-Miller
Sunday Times* . 15/3/1953 J.W.Lambert
The Times* . 7/3/1953 .

(* review of a different translation)

  Review Consensus:

  Impressive but ugly

  From the Reviews:
  • "(O)h god, this book is bleak. (...) (I)t’s also an immortal masterpiece. (...) Simenon doesn’t so much tell us a story as confront us with one. It’s a close third person narration. Uncomfortably close. (...) (Frank) is loathsome, a self-confessed “lowlife” – and by some strange alchemy, Simenon makes him fascinating, compelling company. His mind is as engrossing as it is abhorrent. (...) (A) word of commendation for Howard Curtis’s forceful and fast-paced translation, which is so effective at revealing this book’s dark power." - Sam Jordison, The Guardian

  • "Dirty Snow is a brilliant example of what he called his "romans durs" ("hard" or "tough" novels), so noir it makes Raymond Chandler look beige. (...) The novel captures the bleakness of an occupied city in winter -- the snow, the food shortages, the complicity, the erosion of decency, the arbitrary rulings from on high. Simenon ought to be spoken of in the same breath as Camus, Beckett and Kafka." - Brandon Robshaw, The Independent

  • "The novel is excellently written and full of suspense, but the symbolism often seems strained, and at times the wallowing in the sexual and the repulsive becomes intolerable." - Rene Fueloep-Miller, The New York Times Book Review

  • "This is a mostly horrible, but wholly successful novel, and a powerful extension of M. Simenon's emotional range." - J.W.Lambert, Sunday Times

  • "The Stain on the Snow is as rapid and gripping as ever, and it is much better translated than some of M. Simenon's earlier books. Nevertheless, its extreme squalor can be argued against it. (...) The Stain on the Snow is above all to be recommended to those who base their novel reading on a lower level altogether, for it can unreservedly be commended as an entertainment consistently both vivid and disagreeable." - The Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Snow Was Dirty is a cold, grim novel, set in the winter, in an unnamed occupied country. Written in 1948, the atmosphere (and names) suggest German-occupied France, but there's never any clear attribution (and there is mention of someone who: "is probably the only person in the entire country who is allowed to travel abroad, for mysterious reasons. He has been to Rome, Paris, London", implying the setting isn't France); it could also be post-war occupied Germany -- or no specific country at all.
       The atmosphere is oppressive, and even the snow doesn't stand a chance of remaining pure:

     And always the dirty snow, the heaps of snow that look rotten, with black patches and embedded garbage. The white powder that occasionally peels off from the crust of the sky in little clumps, like plaster from a ceiling, is unable to cover the filth.
       The novel's central character is still-teenage Frank Friedmaier, and it begins with him planning his first kill. His local hangout is Timo's -- "A restaurant. A bar. A nightclub. It's whatever you want it to be. The door's always open. That's Timo's for you" -- and, after all:--
Who, at Timo's, hasn't killed at least one man ? In the war, or some other way. By denouncing him, maybe, which is the easiest. You don't even have to sign your name.
       But Frank wants to be -- and then is -- hands-on -- and casual about this, "a loss of virginity no more remarkable than the first". So also, Simenon describes the build-up and then the aftermath, but not the act itself when Frank does it.
       Frank's mother Lotte runs a little brothel out of their small apartment -- servicing many of the occupiers. Mother and son are loathed by the neighbors -- and envied: everyone else struggles to get by, but they have more than enough money; while the neighbors have little coal for heating, for example: "they themselves have two tons of it in the cellar, but nobody will accept any of their coal".
       Frank dropped out of school -- hey, there was a war on, "life has been so complicated for everyone that Lotte hasn't bothered any more with his education" -- and mom leaves him to his own rather aimless devices (as: "even when he was very young, he noticed that when he looked at her in a certain way, his mother wouldn't insist, seemed scared, did whatever he wanted"). He hasn't turned out great, with even mom pointing out, at one point: "How strange you are".
       Frank doesn't act purely impulsively; in fact, he often reflects -- even though: "He doesn't like a thought to plague him like that, like a fly on a stormy day". But, unfortunately, preferring not to be bothered by thoughts, he does act (out).
       The Snow Was Dirty is divided into three parts. In the first, Frank descends into a life not of petty crime but rather deeper immorality. He kills and is largely unmoved by his killings. But the story also builds up to a terrible betrayal, of sixteen-year-old neighbor girl Sissy, the daughter of Holst, a one-time art critic, now reduced to tram driver, who has a crush on him.
       Sissy's mother ran away from the family -- and Frank is fatherless, and more intrigued by Holst than Sissy:
     What would interest him is having a good long man-to-man talk with Holst. This desire has been tormenting him for a long time, even when he wasn't yet aware of it.
     Why Holst ? He has no idea. He may never know. He refuses to think it's because he has never had a father.
       Frank's plan is put into action in the novel's second part, and doesn't quite come off as planned. If what he did to Sissy -- who takes it very hard -- makes for feelings of guilt he does is best to keep them buried deep (which, in this novel which is also psychological study, he can only manage for so long). Acting out -- anything to avoid dwelling on his real issues -- he gets even more too big for his still-teen britches, to the extent that at one point even Timo, who puts up with pretty much anything, warns him off and suggests: "Now, my advice to you is to stop drinking so much. It makes you show off. Act your age". (But arguably Frank is acting his age: he's only nineteen.) Frank continues to torture himself: "He didn't have enough enemies and he was trying his best to create them".
       Frank also takes to carrying around a huge wad of banknotes that he earned illicitly, showing off with it. Timo warns him:
Do you think it's clever to show your wads of banknotes to just anybody ? Do you imagine people don't know how you get that kind of money ?
       It is the wad that is then also Frank's undoing: even the 'green card' that he managed to get and made for special privileges can't help him out of that jam -- even as he is left stewing for a while, uncertain as to exactly what kind of jam he has gotten himself into. But it gives him more time to reflect -- as Simenon has him get quite impressively philosophical:
He has done a lot of thinking. Too much. Thinking can be dangerous, too. You have to be very strict with yourself. Thinking that he'll get one over on them simply means that he will get out of this. And the expression 'get out of this' doesn't just refer to the place where he is.
     It's amazing the way people outside use words without thinking about their real meaning. He may not be very educated, but there are lots like him, they are in the majority, and he realizes now that he has always been content to use words approximately.
     This question of the meaning of words took him two days. He might come back to it.
       Early on, already, he had found: "Words, basically, are meaningless" -- but he hasn't found much meaning in action either.
       He is, very slowly, worn down; ultimately the words and confessions burble forth, flailing Frank reduced to the boy he still is before one last encounter with Holst and Sissy lead him to pull himself together, after a fashion, and act like a(n adult) man.
       As Simenon sums up, when all is said and nearly done: "It isn't how long something lasts that matter. What matters is that it happens".
       Frank is a study in toxic wannabe-masculinity -- a once-again (or always ?) familiar type. Raised in an apartment that doubled as a brothel -- and with mom's 'girls' actual girls ("They were invariably between sixteen and eighteen years old. Lotte did not want them older"), with whom Frank has his way whenever he feels like it -- there was probably no hope for him anyway. He is drawn to Holst -- cultured, intellectual, a caring father (and possible father-substitute) -- but Holst is of a different world; Frank knows no way to make himself known to Holst beyond the crudest (making sure that Holst is aware of what he's done when he first kills). Sissy's pure love is also entirely beyond him; he knows no way of reacting to it other than to defile it.
       It's a grim, grim affair, a sordid tale -- but very well done. Frank is a flawed character who does terrible things -- all the more terrible because they are largely unnecessary, a mere acting out because he can -- but Simenon's is a compelling portrait. Frank's is not pure evil, it's the banalest sort, and his story not one of stark black and white but rather the dingiest of grey, like the dirtied snow of the novel.
       The Snow Was Dirty is a very impressive work, and even in all its ugliness, with no one to root for, completely absorbing

- M.A.Orthofer, 21 November 2025

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Links:

The Snow Was Dirty: Reviews (* review of a different translation): The Snow was Black - the movie: Georges Simenon: Other books by Georges Simenon under review: Other books of interest under review:

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About the Author:

       Belgian author Georges Simenon (1903-1989) wrote hundreds of books, and is especially famous for his detective-fiction.

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© 2025 the complete review

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