At eighteen, Odile Pointet feels trapped—adrift in her own life, suffocated by an indifferent mother and a father obsessed with his writing. When she disappears from her home in Lausanne, packing a revolver and sleeping pills, her brother Bob is thrust into a desperate search that leads him to Paris. There, Odile drifts between anonymity and fleeting intimacy, haunted by failed relationships and existential despair. A suicide attempt brings her face-to-face with a compassionate medical student, Albert, whose kindness reignites something within her—a fragile hope. But even salvation cannot anchor her; soon, Odile flees again, yearning not for escape, but for autonomy and possibility.
Georges Simenon classified this as a “roman dur”—one of his more serious, psychological novels—and here he explores the fragile terrain of a young woman’s mind with clinical precision and emotional restraint. Translated by Lyn Moir in 1972, this haunting story underscores the fragile boundaries between despair and rebirth.