The internal stresses and strains of family life provide Simenon with a theme for which his talents are particularly suited. The story develops in an atmosphere that is tense with hatred and mistrust, which are shown to be as necessary as light and air. The elders speak to each other to keep up appearances and the children live in a state of fear of they know not what. Even in such a family, whose existence is devoted to the keeping up the traditions of the past, change must come about and when it does spring from this repressed atmosphere it comes with an insatiable remorseless force which destroys the myth of family life, leaving the members to live or die as they choose. The factors inherent in their own characters dictate the paths they follow.
