“Have you ever wished you could be someone other than yourself?”
This question forms the core of Simenon’s subtle exploration of a physician’s reaction to a life-threatening crisis. Finding himself involved in a case of malpractice, Bergelon, a country doctor, sees his established routine brutally broken. An outraged husband is bent on getting a life for a life. The menace, however, also opens an avenue of escape—from a life that in all its aspects is predictable, boring; from a marriage that was stale even when it started; from children who are exploiting and whining; from a pattern of suffocating sameness.
Bergelon does what countless people are tempted to do and some actually succeed in doing: he walks away from his family and his work, with the best of excuses—he is fleeing for his life. Unencumbered by luggage, he drifts to a seaport, takes up with a girl, and very nearly gives in to the lure of exotic places. An orgy into which he is drawn by a daredevil acquaintance opens his eyes to his own limitations.
The Delivery is another of Simenon’s stunningly acute probings into character. Adverse circumstance confronts a man with his latent insecurities, his suppressed desires, and, lastly, with his unconquerable fears.
