Tag Archives: Patrick Modiano

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.

The Black Notebook

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9780544779822_p0_v3_s192x300 French writer Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel prize for Literature, creates a film noir atmosphere in The Black Notebook.  Obscure scribblings in a writer’s notebook  trigger scenes from the seedier side of Paris, and Modiano  keeps the reader off balance by jumping from past to present to dream sequences.  Despite its short length, The Black Notebook is complicated and intriguing.

The story of The Black Notebook revolves around the narrator’s attempt to discover what became of Dannie, a mysterious woman he met in Paris nearly half a century earlier.  When he met Dannie, Jean called himself a “spectator,” noting down everything in his black notebook, which he uses to recall their time together years earlier.

Dannie associates with the “Montparnasse gang,” a shady group of criminals who help her get a place to live and provide her with false identity papers. What she does in return is left unsaid. Although a police detective, Langlais, warns Jean to beware of the gang and exposes Dannie’s many aliases, Jean continues to help Dannie with her strange requests and yearns to run away with her – despite her confession of having killed a man.  Dannie disappears and Jean grows into a famous author, but years later, he bumps into the police inspector who reveals the answers to most of his unanswered questions.

Modiano’s short book reads like a meditation on memory – what we remember and how convoluted it becomes over the years.  The mystery of Dannie is never really solved, and the author ends with more unsettling questions.

The Black Notebook may be a book for our times with its confusion, uncertainty, and elusive promises.  In the end, Jean advises – “…don’t fret about it…”

So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood

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Have you ever lost some of your “Contacts” as you tried to transfer them from one iPhone to another, as I did?  Would your back-up be the Cloud or an old address book buried in a desk drawer?  In Patrick Modiano’s So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood, the lost and found address book becomes the premise for a threatening mystery involving possible murder, blackmail, and a lost past.

Although the story is short, it requires attention to follow the trail, and to decipher the real focus.  The two sinister characters who find the address book and demand information on a name in the book are only vehicles to Daragne’s uncovering a dark childhood secret, but this is not immediately apparent.  The characters fade and disappear as Daragne’s detective-like hunt for clues to incidents evading his memory reappear.

In the first lines of the novel, the real premise is set – a small catalyst (losing an address book) may trigger the path to repressed memories.

“Almost nothing. Like an insect bite that initially strikes you as very slight. At least that is what you tell yourself in a low voice so as to reassure yourself.”

Daragne is telling the story as an older man, a respected and popular novelist – like the author.  As he begins to remember important names and places, he questions his own memory.  How often does memory trick us into a different version than what actually happened?  The story picks up pace, and the evidence pointing to a childhood trauma finally emerges.  The end comes abruptly, with more questions than answers.

Maybe because the novel is translated from the French and is set in Paris, the language has a smoldering aura mixed with the flavor of a film noir.  I  could envision the main character, Jean Daragane, sitting quietly, sipping coffee in an outdoor cafe, as he remembers people and places threatening to upend his life.

Kaiama Glover’s article in the New York Times Book Review section drew me to this small book (155 pages) – a novel promising to reveal the revered author, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his summary of the book, Glover notes:

“{the book is} rife with explicit allusions to the real life of Patrick Modiano, as told in his memoir a decade earlier, the narrative {chronicling} the efforts of an isolated and aging novelist to confront an elusive past.”

Although Modiano has a loyal following for his mysteries in France, and has written over thirty books, this author was new to me. So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood is a compelling read – despite the red herrings and McGuffins in the mystery.  Modiano does not follow the formula for mystery – he breaks it – and creates a suspenseful and thoughtful dilemma. Deciphering the possibilities would make for a great book discussion.