Tag Archives: books

So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

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This short work has all the elements of a noir detective mystery, while also being disturbing and haunting. Having read about the famous Nobel Prize winner but never having read one of his works, I decided So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood, published in 2015, translated from French, was the place to start.

The novel focuses on an aging, reclusive author named Jean Daragane living alone in his Paris apartment. One day he is disturbed by a telephone call from a stranger, Gilles Ottolini, who has found Daragane’s lost address book and presses him about a long-forgotten name in it, Guy Torstel, whose name appears in Daragane’s first novel.

Although he cannot immediately remember Torstel, Jean nevertheless finds himself reading through a dossier about a 1951 murder case, given to him by Gilles’s girlfriend, Chantal Grippay, These papers have names that were once familiar to him, including Torstel. Slowly, a half-forgotten history unfolds. Daragane begins to remember periods in his past when, abandoned by his parents, he lived with the showgirl-courtesan Annie on the outskirts of Paris. He recalls “secret staircases and hidden doors”; Modiano hints at a murder, a cover-up, a flight to Italy – a quietly haunting search for the truth of a postwar French childhood, where nothing is certain.

The ending of the novel comes abruptly, leaving the reader wondering which of Daragane’s memories are accurate and which have been embellished from childhood reveries. More importantly, Modiano leaves the reader with the question of how reliable memory is, and how an event or word can trigger long buried or forgotten recollections. I seem to have more of those these days – finding an old photo that recreates a moment long ago. Recently, a comment from someone I have not seen for years brought tears to my eyes, as I recalled a peripheral experience I thought I had forgotten. Or, as Modiano might posit, maybe had not happened at all, except in a dream.

Modiano’s story effectively nudged me from the seemingly unresolved detective story I was reading into thoughtful and sometimes haunting musings in unexpected directions. Short, confusing, and powerful. I will look for more of his complicated, shape-shifting novels.

Perhaps the best way to understand Modiano is to heed the Stendhall epigraph he provides in the beginning pages: “I cannot provide the reality of events; I only convey their shadow.”

Addendum

It seems I have read not only this author but also this book – before in 2015 and 2017. Maybe that only makes the case for memory being unreliable.

Nora Goes Off Script

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Formula romances are the Hallmark of a favorite streaming movie channel, and you may have wondered, as I have, who writes these happy ever after romantic comedies, always ending in a chaste kiss. In Nora Goes Off Script, Annabel Monaghan’s heroine not only writes the scripts, she lives them.

In a comedy that follows the formula, Nora meets the handsome hero, a movie star who decides to stay in her backyard tea house to get a taste of how real people live. Of course, he gets involved with the local school play; they fall in love; he leaves to film another movie. After a surprise misunderstanding is revealed, they all live happily ever after.

To keep it timely, she wins an Oscar for her writing, accepting in her six inch heels.

A fun diversion when you need it – just like watching one of those movies.

Flight

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Lynn Steger Strong’s Flight centers around a family gathering for the first Chirstmas after the matriarch Helen dies. Maybe it would have been better to read the story around the holidays after watching Home Alone, or maybe the misbegotten grief seemed artificial after having recently experienced it. I read through the book in a couple of days, but was left feeling empty at the end.

The three adult siblings, Martin, Henry, and Kate descend on a house in upstate New York to reconstruct a Christmas that will never be the same since their mother has recently died. Her recipes, her family games, her words of wisdom – all haunt the narrative as they struggle to avoid the usual family squabbles and tension. Helen’s house in Florida provides the bone of contention. Martin, the eldest and a professor recently placed on leave for his inappropriate comments to a student, and his wife, a successful but driven lawyer, want to sell and split the profits. Henry, an artist with a surreal attachment to the environment, and his wife, a former artist but now social worker to pay the bills, want to donate the land to the adjacent national bird sanctuary, and Kate, the youngest, wants the house for herself and her family to live in. Somehow, they thought Christmas would bring them all together and they would more easily come to an agreement. You may wonder what they were thinking, but this is fiction.

Mixed in with the angst and family tension are Quinn, a twenty-three year old recovering drug addict, and her daughter Maddie, both under the care of social worker Alice, who has never been able to have children of her own. This is Alice’s house, and she is a good Auntie, entertaining her nephews and nieces, making gingerbread slabs, buying sleds, and yearning to be a good surrogate mother to Maddie.

The conversations among the adults are anxious and sometimes unnerving, as they try to navigate their own issues as well as their place in a family. Most of the novel has the aspect of a weekly TV series, plodding along with everyday minutia, until Quinn leaves her young daughter alone to go out for a beer, and Maddie goes missing. The overnight search in the snow and forest brings out more inner turmoil among the adults, until a supposedly happy ending brings Christmas mercifully to an end.

The book would certainly provide good fodder for discussion at a book club with its epic family saga vibe and the unique character development offering perspective into sibling rivalry and loyalty. Let me know what you think of it after you read it.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

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A villa in Umbria with breathtaking views and the history of a murder could be the ideal setting for Hawkins to create a mind-numbing formula, but she cleverly transfers the jealousy, greed, and invincibility of youth from the group of spoiled yet talented artists from the seventies to a current day group of the temporary inhabitants in her Gothic tale of The Villa. Taking inspiration from the twenty something group of nineteenth century artists Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and their friends’ who famously spent a summer in Switzerland, writing and cavorting, Hawkins twists the themes of distrust, frenemies, and squandered talent as she flips her story back and forth between the times, carrying the angst, misery, and murder with them.

The plot centers on Emily Sheridan, author of the moderately successful “Petal Bloom” cozy mysteries, who has run out of ideas for her series. Her villainous ex-husband, Matt, is suing for a cut of her royalties, including any future books she may write. Emily’s best friend since childhood, Chess Chandler, a best-selling author of self-help books has rented the Villa Aestas in Umbria for six weeks, and invites Emily to spend the summer with her there. The Villa is the site of a nineteen seventies murder, involving rock musicians and writers. Cue Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, and all those wonderful Gothic mystery components – missing manuscripts, suspicious locals, rakes, and women who succumb.

Rivalry more than collaboration prevails among the musicians and the writers. The two friends find themselves mired in old family squabbles and present day expectations. As a writer, I could understand Emily’s fear of having her ideas stolen. Recently, two books with the same plot and characters were published; one by a well known author, the other by a good writer but without the backing of publishers and without a list of former books. Perhaps you read one or both – JoJo Moyes’ The Giver of Stars and The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson, both told the story of the Appalachian librarian on horseback. Both books were published around the same time; both authors claimed original research and inspiration. Accusations and lawsuits ensued but only the writers knows what really happened.

And would a writer really give up an original idea to collaborate and share credit with a friend? Unlikely – unless you are James Patterson, whose name alone might propel book sales. Hawkins concedes it is fear more than friendship ruling the decisions in her story.

Beware of quitting before the very end. Hawkins seems to wrap up the story, Agatha Christie style, explaining and connecting the various plot lines, but finally, Hawkins changes everything, flipping villain to victim in a surprise twist at the end..

A quick fun read.

If you need more murder, try The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes. My phone said I read this book in 5 hours – a definite page turner. If you are worried about memory loss and manipulation, this psychological thriller will scare you.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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Lately, it seems it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, week, month, and more, but as Judith Viorst would agree, sometimes it is just that way. Reading Peter Baker’s essay in the New Yorker (January 23, 2023) reminded me to look for the humor in those days, even if only looking back at them. The humor always escapes me, as it does Alexander, while in the middle of the muddle.

Judith Viorst’s “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” is celebrating its fiftieth year in print, and it might be time to reread it, maybe before you go to bed tonight. The book is short; the plot is spare; Alexander starts his day with no prize in his cereal, no dessert in his lunchbox, falls in the mud, and is forced to eat lima beans at dinner. More horrors ensue, and in the end, the day ends and he goes to sleep, after the Mickey Mouse night light burns out. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Perhaps you’ve had a few of these lately. I have. You know; those days when you wish you had stayed in bed. But rereading Alexander’s trials made me smile. Not that there is hope that future days will be better; Viorst does not promise that. And, like Alexander, there is not much you can do about it.

Baker notes in his article that after writing about Alexander, “Viorst started a six year study of psychoanalysis, a discipline fundamentally concerned with stories we tell ourselves, and the possibility that revising them might make our terrible days a little less so.” Viorst offers no easy way to deal with such days, saying in the end: “Some days are like that…”

In the meantime, muddling through these days, it might be wise to avoid going to bed with gum in your mouth, a sure sign you will wake up with gum in your hair.