Perversity - Francis Carco

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Perversity

by
Francis Carco

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

Title:	Perversity
Author:	Francis Carco
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1925 (Eng. 1928)
Length:	120 pages
Original in:	French
Availability:	Perversity - US
	Perversity - UK
	Perversity - Canada
	Perversité - Canada
	Perversité - France

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

French title: Perversité
Translated by Jean Rhys

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Our Assessment:

B+ : an (intentionally) ugly, dark tale

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Nation	.	11/4/1928	C.P.F.
The New Republic	.	15/8/1928	T.S.Matthews

From the Reviews:

"A lean and ugly bit of naturalism, done in the pseudo-Flaubert manner (...) (T)his book is not half as powerful as its author’s L’Homme Traqué; but it is distinctly worth reading if only for the genuineness of its prostitutes." - C.P.F., The Nation

"In his tale of a modern Paris slum, he guides us expertly among sadists, masochists, and fancy men. The trip is interesting, but confirms our suspicion that the exaggerated sexuality of the French is not as enviable as some of their other qualities. (...) M. Carco has overstepped the bounds of literature. Such roaming in pathological fields has its uses, but for the purposes of the novel it is not only a dubious but an unnecessary business." - T.S.Matthews, The New Republic

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:

       Perversity is a nicely sordid little tale featuring a brother and sister, Emile and Irma -- "nicknamed La Rouque, the Red One, because of the red gold hair which she wore cut short at the nape of her neck". Emile is a clerk in an office; he's been married twice but: "had never given pleasure to a woman". After the failure of his second marriage he had moved into a hotel -- and then: "he suggested to his sister, apparently for motives of economy which she shared, that they should live together, and he settled in her lodgings".
       While brother and sister living together might make sense for reasons of economy, the arrangement here poses something more of a challenge because Irma is a prostitute and every time she leads a client to her room they must pass by Emile's closed door. This apparently isn't much of an issue -- Irma makes sure her clients are quiet, and Emile seems indifferent to what she gets up to -- until it isn't, the noise and a new client's talking one night disturbing him in his room. The man spends the night, and in the morning it comes to confrontations, first between brother and sister, and then with the man as well. His name is Bébert, and he easily puts Emile in his humiliating place -- and after this he continues to see Irma, and toy with Emile
       Weakling Emile finds himself at the mercy of Bébert, including when Bébert takes him and Bouboule -- "an enormous and red-faced individual", a former boxer who is now a bookmaker -- for a night on the town, despite how ill-equipped, in character and bearing, Emile is for such adventures. Typically, at one point: "Emile said sadly: 'I'd like to go home.'" -- and:

Emile associated the icy winter night and this lifeless and desolate perspective with his own discouragement and the further he advanced, the more worried, broken and helpless he felt.

       Yet Bébert's treatment of him, and what he experiences in his company, also riles him up. Long numbed by the sameness of his blindered routine, he struggles when he is shaken out of it. He's long had: "that look of an automaton which secretly repelled everybody with whom he came into contact" -- indeed, his appearance: "terrified the children of the Quarter" -- but he's always been harmless; now he struggles with the longings and desires that have long lain dormant (in this man who: "had an abnormal need of sleep", indeed who seems to have been sleepwalking through much of his life).
       There is also Belle-Amour -- "an innocent and very ancient creature" -- who lives in the same house and admires Emile. Emile's general suspicion of women keep him wary, but eventually he takes advantage of her feelings for him, the weak victimizing the weaker in his inept way of trying to deal with his inner turmoil.
       Emile descends into a kind of flailing perversity -- with Bébert continuing to antagonize him. Unsurprisingly, it all culminates in tragedy.
       The odd premise -- Emile moving in with his prostitute-sister -- seems, at first, a bit baffling. Emile seems to do well enough financially to afford his own place -- he was married, after all, so he must have been able to afford a separate household. He's also not otherwise any kind of family-man, as he doesn't seem to be place great value in his sister's proximity or company, instead continuing to live following a simple and solitary routine -- as indeed: "He felt more at ease when he was alone". But the implication is clear -- if not very obviously to him --: he harbors, buried very, very deep, a passion for his sister -- and it is this, more than anything, that the appearance and behavior of Bébert bring to the fore. But since Emile is unequipped to deal with it, it all leads to disaster.
       Perversity impresses both as dark character-study and in its depiction of this milieu -- an ugly tale, but a convincing, twisted psychological study. Despite the setting, with its prostitutes and bordellos, and the novel's title, Perversity is more about violence and domination than sex -- though certainly Emile's warped relationship to (and hence with) women play a significant role in how things unfold here. It's all quite ugly -- but well-presented here.

- M.A.Orthofer, 23 January 2025

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Links:

Reviews:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of French literature
See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

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About the Author:

French author Francis Carco lived 1886 to 1958.

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