خیابان بوتیک‌های خاموش

by Patrick Modiano, ساسان تبسمی (Translator)

پاتریک مودیانو یکی از بهترین و خلاق‌ترین نویسندگان زنده‌ی فرانسه است که بی‌شک تاثیر بسزایی بر نویسندگان جوان گذاشته است. جی ام جی لوکلزیو، برنده‌‌ی نوبل ادبی ۲۰۰۸ داستانی از جست‌و‌جوی حقیقت و گذشته‌ی کارآگاهی حافظه‌باخته که همانند همه‌ی شخصیت‌های ضد قهرمان داستان‌های مودیانو، سهمی از گذشته دارد که به بویی از امروز آغشته است؛

Genres: Fiction, France, Nobel Prize, Mystery, French Literature, Literature, Novels

247 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 1978

About the author

Patrick Modiano is a French-language author and playwright and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".

Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings.

While he was at Henri-IV lycee, he took geometry lessons from writer Raymond Queneau, who was a friend of Modiano's mother. He entered the Sorbonne, but did not complete his studies.

Queneau, the author of "Zazie dans le métro", introduced Modiano to the literary world via a cocktail party given by publishing house Éditions Gallimard. Modiano published his first novel, "La Place de l’Étoile", with Gallimard in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.

On September 12, 1970, Modiano married Dominique Zerhfuss. "I have a catastrophic souvenir of the day of our marriage. It rained. A real nightmare. Our groomsmen were Queneau, who had mentored Patrick since his adolescence, and Malraux, a friend of my father. They started to argue about Dubuffet, and it was like we were watching a tennis match! That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. There is only one photo remaining of us, from behind and under an umbrella!" (Interview with Elle, 6 October 2003). From their marriage came two girls, Zina (1974) and Marie (1978).

Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940.

(Arabic: باتريك موديانو)

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

***THIS AUTHOR IS THE WINNER OF THE 2014 NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE.***

”I am nothing.

Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the cafe terrace, waiting for the rain to stop….”

Guy Roland does not know who he is. His past has vanished behind a curtain of amnesia. His made up name is not a source of identity, but merely a convenience for others to refer to him. For ten years he has worked for a private investigator named Hutte. When his boss retires and moves to the city of Nice, Guy decides that maybe it is time to investigate his own past.

I’ve known several people who were adopted and most of them have urgently researched their past searching for any clues to the original egg and sperm donor to their existence. Even though their parents have provided everything they could ever want in terms of love and care they still feel like something has been lost. They feel that those missing pieces once known will finally complete them.

After experiencing some of the angst of watching my friends search and sometimes find their past I went on this journey with Guy with some trepidation. After all, amnesia doesn’t just happen, lifting the veil, more than likely, is exposing yourself to trauma.

The other hazard is that Guy is risking throwing away ten years of a life that could be completely superseded by an old identity.

"The sand holds the traces of our footsteps but a few moments."

Clues lead him to identities that could be his. He tries these lives on like suits left by dead men. They might fit in the shoulders, but be too constrictive in the chest or need to be longer in the sleeves. He has to reluctantly cast them aside one by one and continue to search.

He finds people he once knew, peripheral people who didn’t really know him, but moved in the same circle. Some of their recollections lead him to other people and sometimes something they say hatches a memory, a shadow of a day, the will-o’-the-wisp of a woman.

These memories though are frustratingly worthless, mere teasings, etches of greater things.

”I was nothing, but waves passed through me, sometimes faint, sometimes stronger, and all these scattered echoes afloat in the air crystallized and there I was.”

Maybe….

He follows a trail of broken clues to Rome to Polynesia looking for an elusive friend who could hand him his identity on a silver platter. His whole missing life is gift wrapped in the memories of this childhood playmate.

Who will he be when the key finally fits the lock and his own memory of his past is allowed to soar?

Patrick Modiano’s father never registered himself as a Jew with the Nazis in Paris. In fact he even went so far as to hang out with the Gestapo and made some money on the blackmarket. Modiano’s first book was La Place de l'Étoile which is about a Jewish collaborator. This book displeased his father so much that he attempted to buy all the copies in print. The theme of Modiano’s work deals with the loss of memory, the loss of self, and hidden identities. One could speculate that all of his work is somewhat of a condemnation or maybe in a milder sense an analysis of his father’s activities during the war.

It is easy to judge lives that one has not lived.

Modiano was tutored by the great French writer Raymond Queneau who is one of my favorite European authors. I need to read more of Modiano’s work to be better able to make connections that might lead back to his mentor. This book reminded me of the best of film noir with sparse sentences crackling with static electricity, with fog in the streets, and with assignations held within the smoky interiors of bars and restaurants. ”I often mention bars or restaurants, but if it were not for a street or cafe sign from time to time, how would I ever find my way?”

I kept having visions (unfulfilled) of the 1987 movie Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke before his face become it’s own horror show. I had fears of what Guy had done or what had been done to him. Modiano carefully, subtly, keeps ratcheting up the tension, the anticipation. He drives the reader further into the plot until your hand is feeling forward into the dark wondering if you will touch flesh or fur or yet another stony dead end.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amnesia is a favourite mental disorder for those who exploit detective plots – it at once provides a mystery and unlocks the wide open space for any manoeuvres.

I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the café terrace, waiting for the rain to stop…

And the main hero embarks on a quest in search of his true identity and his own past.

And in this labyrinthine maze of buildings, staircases and elevators, among these hundreds of cubbyholes, I had found a man who perhaps…
I had pressed my brow against the window. Below, each building entrance was lit by a yellow light which would burn all night.

And he always comes to a possibility and never to an assurance that that was his real past…
Some lives are just fiction…

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

When looking back now, on the long and fractious car crash that has been my life, and then, on this miraculous book which says nothing at all too clearly, I find the latter to have been an anodyne for the memories of the former. And has accelerated my own healing process.

In my green adolescence, in 1963, I found a line that nonplussed me and left me scratching my head in an old Ian Fleming book, From Russia with Love. James Bond's new lady love is undressing for bed, and the line runs something like this: "Bond's eyes became tiny slits."

Now, I had never before, being a bit autistic, seen such avid desire represented so OBJECTIVELY.

Just so, Missing Person, for my fellow Aspies, will magically remove such concrete-block conundrums, such confusing crossfire, of indecipherable personal signs and signals from your kailodoscopic consciousness. How?

Modiano's non-existent knight, Guy, has amnesia. He forgets his whole life. He's us.

Like those of us on the spectrum, his identity crisis is profound. He is able, due to his inborn politesse - somehow remaining affable throughout the story - to fit in anywhere, and with everything. A true chameleon.

And slightly fey like Kozinski's Chance the Gardener.

So know what? He has the knack of putting utter strangers at their ease. He is Pleasantly anonymous. But he DOESN'T KNOW WHO HE IS. Hence the book appears to us a noir mystery.

Just as folks are calm being with Guy Rolland, any reader who is dazed by the speed and aggression that is around us everywhere now may be put to ease by this strange book. You may be given peace in your private storm. It is an oasis, a sober nonsequitur. As entertaining and gritty as a film noir.

Call it a perfect Cosy Postmodern Mystery. Which, as no solid mystery - being delved from the fragmentary past of hearsay - is a no brainer, because the solutions themselves are successively disarmed and rendered impotent by the author in the glaring headlights of his realization. Of what: a dawning, nascent recognition?

It reads like a Book on Philosophy by Blanchot such as The Writing of the Disaster: nothing ever happens or progresses into fact, like in a dream that pulls the rug out from under our feet at every turn.

Astringent as a cool rain shower on a hot and humid day, it shocks and puzzles, disorients and dooms. But as the grey skies clear, so Guy becomes more confidently collected, and his thick post-traumatic amnesia begins to disperse.

Anyway, Guy figures it all out, and - horrors - the papier-machier cutouts of the helpful folks all around him suddenly turn into GRIZZLED GHOULS...

"What does it all MEAN, then?"

If you just asked that question you're like James Bond.

But instead of your eyes shrinking to slits -

The little grey cells of your brain -

Are shrivelled in shocked disbelief that this strange little book has garnered so many universal accolades.

Quite simply, it is one man's rediscovery of what he thought was irrevocably lost to him under the trauma of the Nazi Iron Heel.

So, do you still wonder why a pure unknown schmoe like Modiano won the Nobel after he gifted this classic to us?

Wonder no more!

READ this masterpiece.

It'll cool your jets:

And give you cause for deep wonderment and still deeper bewitchment:

And, very possibly, conviction.

Did me!

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here I am, writing from behind my proxy, protecting my identity.

But who knows whether I do have one? What if I were a multitude or a composite of anonymous voices? Or what if my self was nothing but an entanglement of separate lifelines? Could my identity be a broken prism of distorting mirrors?

Engrossed in this magnificent novel, I certainly would forget myself.

Under the guise of a detective story with a ‘noir’ tint, Modiano has span an investigation into the nature of identity that is as beguiling as a lyrical song. Seemingly residing in a name, a nationality, a year of birth, a telephone number, in facts that can be established in an identity card, we soon surmise however that identity is elusive. May be as fleeting as the scent of a perfume, sporadic snowflakes, of the tears of a child.

The search takes us through a maze of disappearing footprints that only leave behind a long list of street names, mostly Parisian streets. It is as if the addresses had kept the singularities of the numerous personalities who have resided there, and those streets and numbers become the persons.

Similarly with photographs. Are we they? To what extent these silver printed images constitute our selves? Have they appropriated our being?

The succession of incongruous personalities, the unpredictable dialogues, the unlikely but treasured cues confer to this novel a flavor of the absurd that kept me fascinated. Indeed, a point came when it seemed that congruity would violate the uncanny nature of the story, and I felt dismayed. But no, the baffling evocation continued.

Modiano’s investigation of the nature of the self is more perplexing and entails a deeper suspense than a common thriller. The reflection on how we construe ourselves, whether out of our recorded memories, or through our imagination, or from the echoes we perceive from the way others see us, is admirably expanded in this beautiful novel. Even if we close the book realizing that ultimately one is alone in this quest and that there may no end to it.

The riddle is partly, and wrongly, given away in the title of the English translation. I find Missing Person it too discernible and unsuitable to Modiano’s ingenious writing and thinking. The original title is the French translation of the street in Rome where Mondiano used to live, Via delle botteghe oscure.


He must have felt that he had left part of his identity there.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes.
An author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and has been recommended by GR friends.
A book printed on smooth ivory paper, enclosed in a silky noir cover.
An enticing premise: reworking clichés (finding oneself, amnesia, a private detective, old photos, secrets, wartime intrigue) into something fresh and original.

It started well.
I enjoyed the cinematic writing.
I liked the idea of a private detective investigating himself.
There was intrigue and atmosphere aplenty.
But found the story increasingly repetitive and dull.
Ultimately, it left me cold.

I think, unusually, I’d have enjoyed it more as a film. Picture this:
“The station square was deserted except for a child roller-skating under the trees on the raised strip.”


Image: Patrick Modiano in Paris in 1969 (Source.)

Who am I?

The most fundamental question of all?

Immediately before this I read Wyndham’s Consider Her Ways and others (see my review HERE), a collection of stories where people find themselves in the wrong time/timelines and literally ask who, where, or when they are - and how.

“I am nothing” - the opening words of this. Guy lost his memory, and for eight years, has been working for the private detective who created an identity for him and told him not to look back. When the boss retires, Guy turns his skills and the office directories to investigating himself. Like some of Wyndham’s characters, he doesn’t know fundamental facts about himself and hopes to find people who might recognise him.

It’s set in Paris, some time after 1965 (there’s a letter from then, on file), but the trail goes back to WW2. There are stake-outs, taxi chases, and a daisy chain of people, notes, and photos in smokey cafés, seedy bars, and swanky restaurants. It acknowledges the clichés:
“It seemed everything ended with old chocolate or biscuit or cigar boxes.”


Image: Still from “Rafles sur la ville” - not particularly related plot-wise (Source.)

The mutability of memory

Hardball detective scenes are juxtaposed with something more ethereal as memories and imaginings blur.
“A mental picture flashed before me, like those fragments of some fleeting dream which one tries to hold on to in waking.”

Guy is unclear what is a memory and what he’s dreamed or imagined; the reader is even less sure. The desire to believe, compounded by the power of images, is a powerful combination. (For example, it’s surprisingly easy to persuade someone they went in a hot air balloon aged ~7, when they’ve never been in one at all: see CogBlog article.)

Making a mark

“Do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood?”
and
“The sand… keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments.”


Image: Footprints along a sandy beach (Source.)

I wonder what marks have I made on the world? I’ve (jointly) created and raised a human who I think is a gentle force for good, but that’s hardly unusual. I talked one person away from a suicidal crisis towards help, but never realised that another had been contemplating it - until they succeeded. I don’t do much harm, but maybe not much good, either.

Then I thought about which of my contemporaries from school and university are notable in some way: the ones who sprang first to mind were for sad or bad reasons. I assumed that was a tragic reflection of societal attitudes to success and celebrity. Then I asked a group of ~20 friends from adulthood: they rattled off classmates who've done impressive things, and almost nothing negative. I guess that means my thought sequence reflects my mindset, not a wider societal malaise. (I’m unsure whether to be worried or relieved.)

“I am nothing” - don't be swayed by my opinion.
Read the many erudite reviews on GR that laud this book.

Quotes

• “An old man so white-haired, so fragile, he seemed to be made of dried plaster.”

• "The dream-like feeling. Cars flowed along in a muffled, fluid world, as though skimming over water".

• "I was sure he was thinking about nothing. He was enveloped in a fog of indifference that grew thicker and thicker."

• “I had the unpleasant sensation I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air.”

• “Strange people. The kind that leave the merest blur behind them, soon vanished… Beauty queens. Gigolos. Butterflies.”

• “Always have several passports as a precaution.”

• “I believe that the entrance-halls of buildings still retain the echo of footsteps of those who used to cross them… All these scattered echoes afloat in the air crystallized and there I was.”

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finding a missing person is a challenge enough, but what if you, the person searching, happens to be looking for yourself? Where the hell do you even begin in searching for the clues with no memories of the years gone by? Delving into the past is obviously a good place to start, with a little help of course, slowly picking up pieces of information here and there that begins to bring back small moments and details that unravel a life forgotten. Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1978, this short novel pays homage to Paris and nostalgia. Modiano's protagonist and part narrator, Guy Roland (a name given to him by his detective agency boss) suffers from almost total amnesia and has been working as a private snoop, solving other people’s mysteries, that is until his boss, Hutte, decides he has had enough, and moves to Nice.

He goes on a journey to rediscover himself again. From nothing, to part-something, to someone. Modiano uses the irony of the detective searching for his old life, and I have to say, I was completely enthralled the whole way through, only to be slightly hampered by the abrupt open-ended last chapter. All those he meets along the way either know him or vaguely know of him, but he knows none of them. Sometimes playing along that he does, in the hope of gaining background knowledge. His fragmented mind is like an egg timer, slowly the grains of memory start to fill up the open space. Most of the period in question was the German occupation of Paris before and during World War two. He would learn of a past riddled with intrigue, with those he loved, those he befriended, and those who had suspicious motives.

Once again, like with a previously read Modiano, the prose used while exploring the theme of identity, showcases his beautifully deft style, with a haunting and melancholy tone. It's like looking at an old family photo, whom some of those have now departed. He utilizes Paris perfectly, creating scene after scene where one can almost smell the aromas of good coffee, and the after taste of cigarette smoke from the Cafés and restaurants, as he weaves his way around the streets of the city. Just be clear to anyone thinking this may be a Jason Bourne style thriller, it absolutely isn't. Modiano has no interest in exciting set-pieces, guns or violence. The pacing is slow for a reason, and works perfectly in tandem with Guy's task of trying to bring his true self back to life. All the characters he acquaints with come across as very tactile, easy to talk to, and are in some cases sad and lonely. It is a book built on triggered inner feelings and rekindling emotions from a bygone era. There are so many beautiful images that Modiano paints throughout the book, his canvas is one of light and dreamy pastels, rather than deep dark colouring.

To some, this could be seen as nothing more than a mystery story with unanswered questions. Anyone that has a heart, will see that there is more to it than that. A sublime and poignant piece of storytelling. I am staggered that most of Modiano's work on GR comes in with such low average ratings. Maybe it just takes a certain kind of reader to appreciate him fully. I am one of them.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Scraps, shreds have come to light as a result of my searches…But then that is perhaps what a life amounts to.’

It seems fitting that a fog has just rolled in as I began writing here. Fog, an essential element to the atmosphere of noir and the essence of Missing Person by 2014’s Nobel Prize of Literature recipient Patrick Modiano. Here is a mystery where everything is shrouded in fog from the evening Paris streets to the narrator’s own memory; Modiano has created a mystery where the detective is the subject of his own case as he tracks down his past lost in a haze of amnesia. Through his purely elegant, lyrical prose, Paris comes alive in a maze of ever changing streets and people who watch the Paris of their pasts, the restaurants and hotels that form the settings of their identity, drift into unreachable oblivion. Through a sleek noir dredging up the shadowy streets of Nazi occupied France, Modiano muses on identity in a world that continuously mutates into the future and finds our only evidence of existence diminishing with the deaths of those who once knew us as another generation passes into silence.

‘Is it really my life I’m tracking down? Or someone else’s into which I have somehow infiltrated myself?’

Guy Roland, or so his false papers claim him to be, seeks out his own identity in a maze of leads that illuminate the tragic tales of others and sends him further seeking traces of his own ghost.

I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of a Saturday evening.Why try to renew which had been broken and look for paths that have been blocked off long ago?

Attempts at finding someone who may recognize him or know him, spurred on by the hopes that it is in fact himself in an old photograph given to himself by his first lead, seem thwarted as the old generation is dying off. But with each story he hears, he finds a glimmer of hope in a small thread that continues his search, and with each new lead comes another story that paints a portrait of 1940’s France in mosaic form. These are identities tossed on the waves of history. ‘The sand holds the traces of our footsteps but a few moments,’ Guy’s former employer tells him, and Guy finds himself like just another ghost, another washed out footstep, remembering a time now gone, where even the restaurants have changed names and the past fades and yellows like an old photograph.

There is always some thread to the past to be found if one looks hard enough. ‘Something continues to vibrate after they have gone, fading waves, but which can still be picked up if one listens carefully.’ These echos of the past are the only thing to seek refuge and understanding it. And nothing echoes more loudly than the boom of war, the fear and fearsomeness of identity checkpoints under occupation. In all his searching, it is to this sad period of history that all his leads point, the big bang of impetus sending all his contacts scattering across the globe, and in this aspect of identity being masked or misconstrued in order to survive is where Modiano’s musings are most poignant. While the longings for the Paris of one’s past are examined in much more depths and heart in Modiano’s Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas, the subtleties and elegance found here is exquisite.

Missing Person is a rather straightforward novel, driven mostly by plot and dialogue that embody the spirit of film-noir at its finest. Modiano does well by having each lead seem more of a disappointment and distraction while giving subtle hints where to look next, however many of the connections seem a bit contrived in hindsight and the reader must have the good faith to suspend some disbelief in order to navigate the maze of mystery. It is when Modiano pulls back from the plot and digresses into philosophical issues or poetic impressions of his Paris wanderings that Missing Person truly shines. Though the plot-driven narrative is exciting and engaging—particularly the twist on the detective story found here—one can only wish the digressions and flourishes of prose that slow things down and allow the reader to really glimpse the heart of Paris and humanity were more frequent.

'Do not our lives dissolve into the evening...'

Modiano has recently been dubbed as a ‘modern Proust.’ While evidence towards such a lofty claim is glimpsed in small doses here, Missing Person seems too plot-driven and contrived to really suite such a claim. Suspended Sentences does better and seems a better portrayal of the key elements that earned him the Nobel Award. Modiano does excel at noir, and Missing Person breathes a wonderfully cold and weightless atmosphere of shadowy figures appearing and disappearing in both a literal mist and one of memory. Full of mystery, suspense and historical importance, Missing Person is a fun noir adventure but leaves the reader wishing the plot were more often pushed aside to let Modiano’s brilliant digressions grow wild.
3.5/5

‘I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the cafe terrace, waiting for the rain to stop.’

[Agnieszka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am nothing. Nothing but a pale silhouette that evening, on the terrace of a café.

The main protagonist of Rue des Boutiques obscures, we could as well call him Guy, suffers from amnesia. He works at detective agency and after his boss retirement decides to learn the truth about himself. With this end in view meets many people, frequently emigrants and stateless persons and gathering vague hints, following blurred instructions tries to solve the riddle of own past. From shards and snatches, elusive memoirs, old photos, addresses and phone numbers attempts to build himself anew and reclaim lost identity. One track leads him to another; sometimes Guy comes close the truth, another time track appears to be dead end.

All the charm of that novel resides in its atmosphere. In foggy weather mirroring Guy’s state of mind, in the maze of dark alleys which he traverses looking for own footprints, in strange apartments, in dangerously looking staircases, in carefully locked doors, in boxes with jetsam, old photographs and letters. In ambience of melancholy and mystery enhanced by alienation and feeling of constant menace. In, generally speaking, poetics of dream in which it is written.



3,5/5

[Sawsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية مشوقة تقوم على فكرة البحث عن الذات والهوية
رحلة بحث يحاول فيها بطل الرواية استرداد ذاكرته المفقود��
لكشف أحداث الماضي ومعرفة حقيقة شخصيته
كل خطوة في طريق البحث تقوده لأماكن وشخصيات مختلفة
يجمع الحكايات والأحداث والصور ليُرمم الذاكرة المعتمة
ويختم موديانو روايته بمواصلة متاهة البحث وكأنها أحد ضرورات الوجود الانساني

[Jr Bacdayan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano, recent awardee of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2014, deserves his place among the greats. After one novel, I’m captivated. What I love about him is his writing style. It is quite similar to that of fellow Nobel laureates J.M. Coetzee and Ernest Hemingway. Modiano writes in a compact, reserved voice. His style does not bombard you with loads of compound sentences nor drops on you a barrel full of adjectives, unlike most accomplished writers of this generation. In fact, it might be described as simple. However, there’s a lingering presence of something I can only call ‘grace’ that envelops his writing. It is a scent that I have always known to come from delicious writing. His sparse and direct prose coupled with his penchant for descripting places translate into something classic and captivating. If Hemingway had a penchant for drink and food, Modiano is infatuated with places: streets, hotels, restaurants, roads, bridges, buildings, he creates descriptions that give one a mental map of some sort, tracing the paths of his characters and introducing new places at every turn. Also, injected into his writing is this feeling of weightlessness, as if one had the ability to disintegrate like some creature made of air. You are engulfed in your reading experience; you never realize how much time you have spent until you actually look at a clock. I loved it.

“There under the embankment trees, I had the unpleasant sensation that I was dreaming. I had already lived my life and was just a ghost hovering in the tepid air of a Saturday evening. Why try to renew ties which had been broken and look for paths that had been blocked off long ago?”

This novella called ‘Missing Person’ is about an amnesiac searching for his identity. This empty man named Guy Roland, who had been living in the shadows as a private detective for eight years, decided that he finally had it in him to search for his forgotten past. Along the way he rediscovers old places, meets old acquaintances, and regains pieces of his broken memory.

“Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called ‘the beach man.’ This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name or why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that ‘the beach man’ was myself.”

We all ask ourselves ‘what is the purpose of my life?’ ‘why am I here?’ We ask these questions to bring some sense of order in this business of living. We are looking for direction, a future. We are looking for a map to tell us which road to travel on, which path to take. Not a bad plan for life. But in order to be able to know what one is to do, don’t you think that one needs to know oneself? How is a traveler supposed to travel if he does not even know that he is a traveler in the first place?

“You were right to tell me that in life it is not the future which counts, but the past.”

Identity is built upon one thing, the past. We become who we are through the accumulation of memories and experiences. The only thing we really build in life is our identity. Yes, the future gives us some sense of trajectory, of purpose but then it is the past that controls the future. You were, therefore you are.

“A little girl is returning from the beach, at dusk, with her mother. She is crying for no reason at all, because she would have liked to continue playing. She moves off into the distance. She has already turned the corner of the street, and do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood?”

At once a mystery, but then also a journey into memory and time, ‘Missing Person’ will leave you breathless. This novel about the self tells us that oftentimes we are too busy looking for our identity in the past, asking too many questions about our purpose in the future, that the result is a life of asking and searching instead of one of living. Life need not be so complicated. Looking forward and backward is inevitable, you cannot stop doing that, but never ever fail to focus on the now.

“Until now everything has seemed so chaotic, so fragmented… scraps, shreds have come to light as a result of my searches… but then that is perhaps what a life amounts to…”

"Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we are all ‘beach men’ and that ‘the sand’ – I am quoting his own words – ‘keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments'."

Whether you look at the past, the present, the future, only one thing is certain: life is ephemeral. Make it count.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Workin' on mysteries without any clues"—Bob Seger

"Je ne suis rien." (I am nothing)

"I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape, silhouetted that evening against the cafe terrace, waiting for the rain to stop."

Patrick Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. I had never heard of him before that. Most of his novels then had not been translated into English. I ignored him until this week, having read Ilse’s review of another Modiano book:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and having some driving time to do, I listened to this book, his sixth, with the original and more appropriately poetic title, Rue des Boutiques Obscures (published in English more prosaically as Missing Person).

In Missing Person we have a novel about memory, about reconstructing the past even as it fades away. "The sand holds the traces of our footsteps but a few moments." Guy Roland is a detective with (improbably) amnesia working on cracking the most important case of his life: Who am I? Apparently, he was Jimmy Pedro Stern, a Greek Jew from Salonica, who was living in Paris under an assumed name, Pedro McEvoy, and maybe working for the Dominican Republic. Maybe. Roland was a name given to him by his former boss, Hutte, who rescued him, gave him a job, the last assignment of which was to find Roland’s own true identity. The novel is primarily about Roland’s meeting people to ask them questions, as a detective would do, to find a scrap here, a scrap there, of his past. Is this tidbit of information a blind alley, a false lead? Is the thing that it makes me recall important to the puzzle or not?

"Scraps, shreds have come to light as a result of my searches. . . But then that is perhaps what a life amounts to."

Missing Person is a seventies existential mystery about the search for identity, which is always reconstructive, flawed, partial, in part a fiction. Roland (and Modiano) are engaged in a process of unlocking the past, especially thirties and forties Paris as it relates to the Occupation when Modiano's father, a Jew and a petty criminal, was believed to have worked for a time as a Gestapo collaborator. So, as with any mystery, it's about unearthing barely discernible “shady dealings” with various Russian expatriates, and others of mixed or uncertain nationalities with whom Roland (and possibly Modiano’s father) seems to have been involved: Denise, a model; Gay Orlov, an American dancer of Russian origins, a swirl of people. Roland lost his memory from some injury in the war; was he (or was it Modiano’s father?) involved in the Communist party? The effect is a noir story that doesn’t turn thriller, but is instead a dark exploration of the past.

(I first went to Paris in 1976 with someone I loved and no longer know. Life was alive for us, new, exciting. What do I recall of that first trip? Scraps of a Paris partly invented through French film, through Truffaut, through ex-pat American novels, a Paris of romantic invention: Strolling through The Jeu De Paume, the Louvre, sipping cafe au lait in cafes near Notre Dame, waking to buy wine and fresh bread and cheese to idly lounge on the banks of the Seine, the Artist’s Quarter, all that tourist jazz.

What is real and invented about that time, that relationship? Why do I have so many regrets after so many years gone by? As I read this book, I recall Ilse’s review on her evocation of Paris, I recall my own visits to Paris, of people I met there, my own scraps of the past. I’m Dorothy, falling to Oz, glimpsing images of the past, slowly passing by. Oh, there’s Anne, my high school friend, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, wow, hi, Anne! (I did see her there!) Wearing backpacks, we are not allowed by the concierge to enter this bar where Hemingway once lounged.

"Is it really my life I’m tracking down? Or someone else’s into which I have somehow infiltrated myself?"

“The letters dance before my eyes. Who am I?”

A low overall Goodreads rating maybe points to the fact that nothing much happens in this short book except a man searching for clues, with the mystery never ultimately solved. A slow moving, brooding, atmospheric story told in foggy weather in a maze of apartment building corridors and cafes and dark alleyways, sifting through boxes of old photographs and letters. The effect is more poetry and dream than novel, but in a way, it may be truer to life than any neatly shaped fiction of the past most novels construct.

"When it comes down to it, it may be that I never was this Pedro McEvoy, I never was anything; but the waves that passed by me, sometimes distant and sometimes closer, and all those echoes that hung in the air crystallized and that was me.”

Modiano’s style reminds me of Simenon, Coetzee, Hemingway, Proust, (the literary Everest of memory), Lydia Davis. The audiobook is narrated by Bronson Pinchot; the translation by Daniel Weissbort, who I have to credit with at least some of the lyricism I much liked. I’ll now go on to read more Modiano as I search for my own past as I read. 4.5, though I just may rate it higher as I read more of his books.

[Mevsim Yenice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modiano’ya bu yıl resmen vuruldum. Hangi romanını okursam okuyayım hep aynı hisle doldum. Çok sakin bir hüzün yaşattı bana.

Genelde benzer meseleler(kimlik, benlik, geçmiş) ve dönemler (ikinci dünya savaşı ve sonrası) üzerinde düşünüp yazmasına rağmen, aynı şeyi okuyormuşum hissiyatına hiç kapılmadan, aksine sanki her romanla birlikte Modiano’nun dünyasındaki başka bir küçük ayrıntıyı yakalamışım gibi heyecanlandım.

Hayatındaki eksik ve bir türlü tamamlanmayan-özellikle geçmişinden gelen- o mühim parçayı arama, bulma, tamamlama arzusuyla Modiano anlattı sanki ben de onunla o kayıp parçayı arar gibi içimde bir boşluk ve hüzün duygusuyla ona eşlik ettim.

İlginçtir ki işin en güzel yanı sanırım şuydu; bu eksiklik hissi hiç kahreden bir hal almadı. Aksine sanki kimselere izah edemediğim ama çocukluğumdaki en eski anılarımdan bu yana hep içimde var olan, bir parçam haline gelen o duyguyu anlayan bir arkadaş bulmuşum gibiydi. O garip duygunun sebebini tek basıma aramaya korktuğumdan, Modiano’yla birlikte aramaya devam ettik –bulamayacağımızı bile bile-.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written, pared down and quietly disturbing…my favorite kind of novel.

The author, Patrick Modiano was the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature. This novel won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1978. It’s the story about a detective who loses his memory; and, for his final case he sets out to uncover his true identity.

Amnesia is often the result of some tragic occurrence in a person's past. So, I felt a sense of heightening tension when he gradually uncovers fragments of his mysterious past history. As he follows leads going back to the 1940's Nazi Occupation of Paris (which may or may not be clues to his past) the novel becomes less a thriller and more a probing self-reflection on identity, memory and the passing of life. This story reminded me of a quote from another book that I read some time ago:

” There is something miraculous in the way the years wash away your evidence, first you, then your friends and family, then the descendants who remember your face, until you aren’t even a memory, you’re only carbon, no greater than your atoms, and time will divide them as well.”

I was absolutely captivated by this lyrical and sometimes surreal gem of a story.

[Mutasim Billah · Rating 3 out of 5]

“You were right to tell me that in life it is not the future which counts, but the past.”

Meet Guy Roland, an amnesiac detective. The story opens in 1965, Roland's employer has decided to retire and close the detective agency where Guy has worked for the past eight years. Left with no vocation, our protagonist decides to start his own case: a search for his own past. We are jostled and pulled into several characters, who he somehow or other, presumes to be connected to his case. Going past dead ends, and false memories our man Roland, after interview upon interview, finally appears to have regained some of that lost memory.



But to fill in the gaps in his mind, he needs to meet a certain Freddie. But where is Freddie? Is he still alive? Be prepared for that involves smugglers, swindlers and lost faces in the race of time.

As usual, Modiano makes memory his most vital weapon in writing, and the protagonist is left clutching at every straw to find some semblance to his identity. Keep reading to find a place lost back in time.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the first Modiano I read. He has a thing with people who are obsessed by the past, in particular their personal past. In this novel a certain Guy Roland is looking for who he really is, 10 years after he lost his memory. His quest brings him to a dozen of people, one after the other, by association. And every time he thinks : “ah, maybe I am this person, or no, perhaps I am that one”.

Gradually pieces of memories come back and eventually he can put a name and a face on the man he used to be and on the people he lived with (typically for Modiano also the second world war plays a part). But Modiano also subtly hints these memories probably aren’t really trustworthy. And the list of people Guy should contact, keeps on growing; in the end you have the feeling he is never going to find a definitive answer who he was before his amnesia.

And – according to me – that is the message Modiano has put in this novel: the past is a phantom you never really can grasp, like an horizon that always recedes. This sounds very pessimistic, because it means you never can catch your own identity, know who you really are or where you come from. At the beginning of the novel a friend of Guy advises him: “il faut vivre au present” (you have to live in the present), which is bluntly true, but together with Modiano we have to notice that people keep on clinging to the past. Maybe that’s one of the fundamentals of being human?

Modiano keeps on amazing: it is as though he consciously does not want to be a spectacular writer; he keeps on writing about “little” people (no heroes) in a very concrete setting (especially Paris), in a simple and smooth style, very likable but not exceptional. Simply great! (his French also is very readable!).

[Sara Kamjou · Rating 2 out of 5]

داستان در مورد شخصیه که هویت خودش رو به یاد نمیاره و با جستجو در خاطرات و اسناد به دنبال اینه که بدونه چه کسی بوده.
دومین کتابی بود که از مودیانو می‌خوندم و از اولی (برای اینکه در محله گم نشوی) بهتر بود ولی فکر نکنم دیگه سراغ کتابی از این نویسنده برم. کسل‌کننده شروع شد، یک جاهایی حدود یک سوم میانی، داستان جالب شد. اوج داستان برام جایی بود که یک نفر تمام آلبوم‌های عکسش که به نظرم کنایه به خاطرات داشت رو به غریبه‌ای می‌بخشه. ولی در ادامه تکرار مکررات حوصله‌م رو سر برد.
پایان‌بندی کتاب رو دوست داشتم. جمله پایانی خیلی زیاد با متن داستان هماهنگ و در حکم عصاره بود.
+ متاسفانه کتاب کمیابه و نسخه چاپیش ممکنه به سختی گیر بیاد. من از روی اپ کتابخوان فراکتاب، نسخه‌ی ای‌پابش رو خوندم.
----------
یادگاری از کتاب:
همه چیز بین «آدم های دنیا» اتفاق افتادنی ست.
...
شاید چیزی، پاره‌ای از زندگی‌ام، آنجا پیش كسی، درون آپارتمانی در حاشیه‌ی باغچه‌ها كه هنوز به یادم می‌آید، باقی مانده باشد.
...
آیا حیات ما نیز به همان سرعتِ این اندوهِ كودكانه در دل غروب ناپدید می‌شود؟

[Duane Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Patrick Modiano until he won the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature. The press release suggested that "Missing Person" was one of his best novels and a good place to start, so that's what I did. It's a mystery novel with the setting in Paris during, I believe, the 1970's, although I don't recall that being stated. Guy Roland is a private detective and his boss is retiring, which will leave Roland free to embark on the most important case of all, to find out who he really is. His memory from his earlier life is gone, Guy Roland isn't even his real name. The blank space in his memory is from the 1940's, the Paris Occupation by the German's. Who was he then, who were the people he knew, who did he love, what happened? Roland has a few clues, names of people who may know something, and as he meets each one he gathers more information, pictures, letters, things that lead him further along.

The hook in this novel comes early enough so it's easy to stay engaged. The writing is excellent, not surprising, a very distinct and simple style. There was something about it that reminded me of Hemingway, not so much the style, probably the location and the war aspect. I want to read more of Modiano's work, I was really impressed. The only thing that kept me from giving this 5 stars was the ending, but I will still gladly recommend it to my friends.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you know how many books with the word "missing" in the title there are listed here at Goodreads? I'll tell you: a bunch. And a lot of them include the words "person" or "persons" in the title. But I'll bet you that the plot in this Missing Person differs from all the rest.

On the surface it is much like hundreds of other novels in which a man has lost his memory. What is different, however, is that in the years since that memory loss he has become a trained private detective. Therefore, he is especially equipped to backtrack in a quest to discover his true identity. Now, I'm not giving anything away here because the reader finds this out in the opening pages. And that is as far as I am going to go with my review, because I want to turn that job over to someone else.

I want to thank my Goodreads good friend Carol for leading me to this book, one that I would never have discovered without her help, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed -- yuuugely. So, I'm going to send you to the fine review that sparked my interest and led me to this book.

You can read her review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[AiK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Книга заинтересовала тем, что автор - Нобелевский лауреат, чьи книги прежде мне не попадали в руки. Но я прихожу к мнению, что не всегда это звание гарантирует хорошую литературу.
Роман оказался довольно прост с детективным сюжетом - описываются поиски своего прошлого сотрудником частного детективного агентства, давно потерявшего память, чем он и занимается весь роман. Даже с таким незатейливым сюжетом, и без сюжета можно нести какие-то идеи. Здесь нет идей - просто описывается процесс и разговоры с людьми, которые знали его или связанных с ним в прошлом людей в ходе поисков, которые заставили его исколесить полмира - от Америки до Полинезии. Заинтересовала Дениз - манекещица-азиатка. Не была ли ее прототипом легендарная Алла Ильчун, первая азиатская манекенщица, муза Диора и Ив Сен-Лорана? Заслуживает сочувствия ресторанный критик, который подавляя дурноту, подносит ко рту кусочек изысканного паштета. Когда книга так слаба, то и писать рецензию не хочется.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Beach Man

Until recently, the American genres of noir and detective fiction have enjoyed a higher literary esteem in France than in their native United States. This situation has changed with the publication of some of the best noir and crime writing in the Library of America series. Patrick Modiano's 1978 novel, "Missing Person" shows the strong influence of American genre writing. This book was the first I have read by Modiano. The novel received little notice in the United States until Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Noir and detective genres pervade Modiano's book in style, character, and theme. The spare, clear writing approaches the "hard boiled" prose of American genres. The book is short and is probably best first read in a single extended sitting if possible. The book is artfully arranged with shifts in time and some changes in voices. The chapters range from a single sentence or two to several pages, giving the book a forward, varied flow. The book's many characters are shadowy and mysterious and each of them carries guilt and a past. The book has an urban setting characteristic of noir with scenes in bars, streets, many small shady businesses, abandoned schools and garages, old dingy apartments, train stations, and more. Much of the action takes places at night and in shadows. I found it easy to visualize "Missing Person" as a noir film.

The book is set in Paris in the mid-1960s and back to the Paris of the German occupation during WW II. The primary character is a man who goes by the name of Guy Roland. As the story opens, Roland has worked for a private investigator, Hutte, for eight years when Hutte is about to retire and leave Paris. Before Hutte had hired Roland, Roland had come to Hutte seeking help in recovering his lost identity as he suffered from a near-total amnesia covering several years. Hutte gave Roland his new name and identity together with a job. When Hutte retires, Roland tells him that he is going to try to search out his past. Hutte understands and sympathizes while observing that some matters may best be left alone. Later in the book, there is a suggestion that Hutte may have rethought his belief on this matter. Amnesia and the search to recover identity are relatively common literary themes and they appear in American noir writing and film. An example is the noir writer Cornell Woolrich's (1903 -- 1968) story, "The Black Curtain" which in 1941 became an early noir film, "Street of Chance" starring Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor.

The body of the book details Roland's search to discover his memory and his earlier self. He uses his skills as a private investigator and follows through on minimal clues meeting with many people who individually offer bits and pieces about his past. Each of these individuals has mysteries his or her own. It is surprising how forthcoming and friendly they generally are with Roland, a stranger who approaches them from nowhere. The characters include diplomats, barkeeps, jockeys, gardeners, teachers, musicians, and more. Some of the characters, particularly the Dominican diplomat Porfiro Rubirosa, are historical figures. The story melds American noir/detective writing with the search for identity and with a meditation on France and Europe during the dark years of WW II and on the continuing impact of these years.

While the book has a political setting with the German occupation, I thought it focused more on the evanescence of personal identity and on the compartmentalized, fragmented character of human relationships. On the latter, Roland observes about midway through his search that "[p]eople certainly lead compartmentalized lives and their friends do not know each other. It's unfortunate." The quest for personal identity is a theme throughout the book. My sense is that Roland would have been better served by moving forward with his life, pursuing his private investigator career, and finding a woman to love. I am skeptical about quests for fixed identities, particularly past identities, but it is not clear whether Roland or the author would fully agree. A telling passage early in the book involves a parable of a "beach man" who lives an existence for a moment that is quickly forgotten. Modiano's novel can be seen as a development of the following little parable. Roland reflects:

"Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called 'the beach man'. This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that 'the beach man' was myself. Though it would not have surprised him if I had confessed it, Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we were all 'beach men' and that 'the sand' -- I am quoting his words -- 'keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments."

I enjoyed reading this fine novel both for its own sake and its themes and for the associations if had for me with American noir writing.

Robin Friedman

[Tijana]

Ulica mračnih dućana je solidan roman, ne baš remek-delo ali, eto, solidan. Moj prvi susret sa Modijanom bio je U kafeu izgubljene mladosti koji ima vrlo slične karakteristike (detektivisanje, sumorna atmosfera koja dosta vuče na film noar, neodređeni identiteti i rasplinuti likovi bez razrešenja) ali je mnogo slabiji na svim nivoima, prosto jer Ulica mračnih dućana ipak malo više investira u likove i njihovu muku, a protagonista grana svoju zbunjenu i konfuznu istragu o vlastitom identitetu u više neodređenih pravaca pa tako steknemo malo bolji utisak o njemu i o svetu u kome se kreće. Modijano paralelno gradi dva vremena - Pariz 1965. i Pariz Drugog svetskog rata - i pokazuje da im je zajednička specifična letimičnost ljudskog života koji se lako zaboravi, raspline, svede na nečiju nejasnu uspomenu iz detinjstva, ime koje se ne može povezati s likom. Nepouzdani pripovedač vuče veći teret a manje ga formalno oblikuje nego npr. junaci Rob-Grijea, i to je veliki plus, ali na kraju se ovaj kratki roman ipak previše rasturi, Modijano nam uskrati ne samo pravu katarzu nego i neke ključne momente zapleta, i čitalac ostane dosta nezadovoljan. Žan-Pjer Melvil bi na osnovu ovog teksta napravio mnogo bolji film nego što je ovo roman: ali bi ga mogao napraviti, i to je već dovoljna pohvala.

PS ipak bi bila nepravda da ne pomenem ljupku minijaturu sa sporednim likom restoranskog kritičara koji mučenik ruča brizle jer mora da napiše članak o njima, a upravo je stigao sa žiriranja za Zlatnu tripicu gde je pojeo 170 tripica za dva dana :) redak i utoliko dragoceniji prosev humora u suštinski neveseloj knjizi.

[Karen·]

Je ne suis rien

Modiano modulates the starkness of that statement straight away. "I am nothing. Nothing but a pale silhouette that evening, on the terrace of a café. I was waiting for the rain to stop, a downpour that had started the moment Hutte left me." That switch, from a general statement, I am nothing, to a particular occasion, on the terrace of a café, but a generic, unnamed café, not a specific one (and how can a silhouette be pale?); the switch to the past tense, but not the historic past, no, the imperfect, a tense used for regular re-occurring events, or for the unfinished...; and then the intentionality of the weather, rain that can seemingly wait until the moment Hutte leaves to start its symbolic downpour, all these subtly handled modulations combine to take this narrative out of the mundane, the banal, the realistic world, into some dream-like place. Right from the start, I felt less that I was reading and decoding, than that meaning was being planted by an unseen hand in my mind.

To relay the story itself is simple: Guy Roland was given that name, and papers to go with it, as a convenience: in fact he has no memory of who he is at all, no identity, none. Je ne suis rien. For years he has worked together with Hutte as a private investigator. Now that Hutte is retiring to the South of France, Roland decides to make use of the office resources and contacts to research into his own past. The identities that he uncovers, the story he finds (or invents?), are all dubious themselves, counterfeit names and papers opening out like nesting Russian dolls into more falsity and deception. Roland ends by identifying with one character, but whether the story that brings everyone together is really his past or one that he has invented is never known, and, in the end, is immaterial.

So, it might appear that this is the roman policier version of Modiano's obsessions. I bought this (yes, I caved already, I bought a new book) in one of those rare and precious places, a really good bookshop with staff that can help and give advice. There was a big display of Modiano - didn't realize he'd written so much! - so I asked the nice lady where she thought I should start? Well, says she, his books offer variations on a theme, so she recommended that I should, at the very least, buy the special edition of Le Magazine Littéraire dedicated to the man, and check through the list of works with summaries in there, or just take a look at the back covers, and pick what appealed. There were several that dealt with loss of identity, search for identity, with puzzles, and putting together the fragments of a life. I read that Modiano was born in 1945, the day after Liberation. I read that Modiano's father, himself Jewish, had refused to register as a Jew or wear the yellow star under Occupation, effectively denying his identity, and even collaborating with the occupying forces. Survival by breaking with your past, by creating a new persona. The father who then left the family. Ghosts of Modiano's past that he is trying to lay, variations on that theme?

But such a reading would be reductive in the extreme. For Modiano creates one of those magical worlds that are both real and not, both concrete and symbolic, both of a particular individual and of all mankind. The search that goes beyond a name or an address or a date of birth, the search that creates connections, follows relationships, is also the search of the writer for a story, building the tree of narrative from tiny seeds. And also the story of reading, to forget yourself and identify with another, to take on his personality and his story and feel his pain, share his fate, make his mistakes.

There are leitmotifs that run through this novel, and may be typical of Modiano, even Le Magazine Littéraire comments on a striking homogeneity in his work, which might well be politespeak for always the same. Keys: a fascination with keys turning in locks; cigar boxes, biscuit tins that contain photos, tickets, scraps, the collected leftovers of a life; and yearbooks, or telephone books, or registers of everyone who ever lived at an address, reverse telephone books, in any case something that in French were called Bottins (?) - no idea really, but they would appear to be a convenient precursor of internet research, very handy for private investigators.

I think this most reminded me of Saramago, that real world that carries symbolic weight. I need to re-read All the Names. Yes.
I'd like to read more Modiano. See what austerity allows.

[TBV (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who? What? Where? Why?

This was my second Modiano novel, and once again more questions crop up than answers. In Villa Triste the protagonist was a stateless person, here the protagonist, Guy Roland, has lost his memory and is in search of his identity, and by extension a search for his self.

As other readers have already provided good summaries of the plot in their excellent reviews, suffice to say that Guy follows up scattered clues and finds fragments of information which he pieces together, and which at times jolt his memory. Repeatedly he is given biscuit tins and hatboxes filled with photos and other mementoes, and this is what struck me most: in the end, once we are gone we are simply a few photos, notes and other small mementoes stuck in someone's discarded biscuit tin - or perhaps these days the biscuit tin is obsolete and we continue to exist on an unused phone, tablet, or an unaccessed cloud account.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

[fคrຊคຖ.tຖ · Rating 4 out of 5]

سبک قلم نویسنده رو دوست داشتم و موضوع داستان هم جالب بود. طوری که کشش داشت بخوای تندتر بخونی و بفهمی هویت نقش اصلی کی بوده و در انتها داستان یک‌جورایی باز تموم می‌شه ولی به‌نظرم پایان خوبی بود و البته ناراحت کننده...

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is special: unique in style, often lyrical and philosophical in tone. Both abstruse and atmospheric. What makes the style unique is the mix of concrete facts (addresses, dates, telephone numbers) and diffuse, atmospheric and philosophical musings. The writing pulls you in with its lyricism and baffles, confuses and keeps you searching for understanding. It is in fact the writing that is the best attribute of the book.

This is the story of an amnesiac searching for his past. The past is Paris during the Occupation. The now, when he is searching, is in 1965. He is in a fog, and so is the reader. Slowly the fog dissipates. The central theme is identity, understanding of self and who we are, how we see ourselves and how others see us.

So why not more stars? I think the author makes too much of a mystery of our inability to understand ourselves. This is nothing that surprises me. Also, I found the book to be overly confusing.

The audiobook is narrated by Bronson Pinchot; the translation by Daniel Weissbort. The lyricism of the lines shines through; this must be accredited to the translator. Pinchot's French and the inflection used for the central character (Guy Roland) are superb. The listener hears the queries troubling Roland. They feel genuine.

[Gypsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

پایانشو خیلی دوست داشتم. همچنین تعهّد نویسنده در مورد شهری نوشتن. ترسیم چهره‌ی پاریس، آدمای پاریسی و جریانات پاریسی و نتیجتاً، یه‌داستان پاریسی. داستان، تعلیق خیلی خوبی داشت؛ هم به‌لحاظ فرمی و ساختاری، هم محتوایی. با این‌که من کلاً با شخصیّت‌ها خیلی ارتباط برقرار نمی‌کردم و تا به‌حال دو کتابی که از پاتریک مودیانو خوندم، همین‌اندازه شبح‌گونه و مبهم بودن.. ولی، این‌ابهام ضربه نمی‌زنه و می‌تونیم بگیم شاید سبکشه حتّی. قسمت مهمّش این بود که با وجود این‌همه گره و مسئله و سرنخ‌های مختلف، نویسنده رشته‌ی داستانو گم نمی‌کرد! این خیلی مهمّه؛ بخصوص تو چنین داستانایی که اون‌قــد نشونه‌ها زیادن که ممکنه خود ِ نویسنده هم بعد یه‌مدّت، نتونه اون‌جور که باید و شاید، از خلالشون داستانو پیش ببره و بهم ربطشون بده. بهشون بگیم داستانای زنجیره‌‍ای؛ گرچه اسم بهتری می‌طلبن.

[Geoff]

This guy just won the Nobel prize. Who gives a shit, right? But then there's this: "He studied at Lycee Henri-IV in Paris, where his geometry teacher was Raymond Queneau, a writer who was to prove a major influence." -- You just said the magic word -- QUENEAU! So my interest has piqued...

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man." This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs.

A.S. Byatt once noted she finished David Mitchell's Ghostwritten at a busy airport baggage carousel and found the location infinitely appropriate. Likewise I found myself this morning in a darkened swirl of insomnia and read the final 100 pages of Missing Person. Periodically I stared about our quiet living room. I looked at where this afternoon I'll put the Christmas tree I buy at the supermarket. I looked out the window and the neighbors' seasonal lights. I don't question why we don't employ our own. I just don't. Life is often hazy and ill-defined. I wish I had the means at the disposal of Modiano's protagonist. I certainly liked this one better than my previous exposure to the Nobel Laureate. I think the sinister whispers of history were significant here. I'd recommend Missing Person as a premium point of departure for this strange author.

[Denis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is probably one of the seminal works of French literature from the seventies - and one of the highlights of Modiano's impressive career. It's a beautiful, haunting, profoundly melancholic novel where the reader will find the essence of what is Modiano's world (some critics have blamed him for revisiting the same themes over and over again through his books). The story is quite simple: in the mid-sixties, a man who has suffered from amnesia tries to find out about his past, and goes on a quest that will lead him to meet different people who may, or may not, know about who he was. The writing is exquisite yet never showy: Modiano is one of those writers whose style is absolutely unique but difficult to describe; it hits the perfect note in a low-key mode, without literary flourishes. Each word, each sentence is exactly the right one. But what makes this novel so deeply intense and moving is the half untold story that slowly unfolds without really finishing at the end, the atmosphere that emanates from it. The hero tries to reconstruct what his past may have been, and it's a sad past, but he'll never be sure of what happened, and he'll never know all about it - and the reader won't either. It's not frustrating: it captures something of the evanescence of life and memories that is heartbreaking. The empty streets of Paris at sunset or at night, figures from the the past with exotic names and shadowy lives, older people who survive alone with their memories... Modiano's world is dark, and flirts with the film noir ambiance, but it never really becomes a thriller: it's more a nostalgic, slow-paced meditation on the passing of life, where the mysteries are never solved. One of the most fascinating aspect of the novel is that all that is linked to the past takes place in the thirties and forties, when France went through some tumultuous events, but Modiano never describes those events, although they do play a key role in what happens to the hero: anyone who doesn't know much about France history will miss a lot of what makes this novel so poignant and beautiful.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, another novel with a Parisian setting, published in 1978 - see my favourite book...

On one level, this is fairly standard noir. It's built around the old trope of a man with amnesia seeking out his past. But as the layers of obfuscation - it's my word of the week - and intrigue were piled on, I found myself being drawn into the narrative. On another level, it seems to be an homage to Paris and its streets, apartment blocks and cafés. And I've no problem with that.

It gets a tad repetitious in places. There seems to be an endless series of meetings with jaded older men over supper in cafés and restaurants as the narrator, Pedro McEvoy or Stern, seeks to discover the truth about his past. These gentlemen are forever taking him by the arm as they stumble through the darkness. It stretched credence at times too. The scene with "Mr McEvoy" and Hélène Pilgram just didn't ring true at all. Her failure to perceive his amnesia serves the plot but calls for her to be breathtakingly unobservant. Similarly, the "coincidence" of bumping into a key figure from his past in a bar feels like a deus ex machina.

Given my obsession, of course, it brought me great pleasure that Pedro McEvoy used to sit at a café on the corner of Rue de Rome and Boulevard des Batignolles, two Metro stops and a little over a kilometre away from Madame Riri's on the corner of Rue de Chazelles and Rue Léon Jost (see my favourite book). At one point, our narrator walks towards Courcelles Metro station, a stone's throw from Riri's. It should come as no surprise, I suppose, since Modiano was also a protégé of Queneau. But the Perecquian connections don't end there. The original title of Modiano's novel is Rue des Boutiques Obscures. Perec's dream diary was of course entitled La Boutique Obscure. And then there's Alfred Howard Luz, an English plutocrat who idles away his time, having no need to work. So far, so Percival Bartlebooth... The possibly part-Jewish narrator ends up hiding out in the French Alps (Perec's direct experience as described in W, or the Memory of Childhood). Hmm. Synchronicity?

Missing Person takes aspects of Modiano's own life and mashes them up to make something new. Various characters in wartime Paris prove to be Greek, Italian, Flemish and Jewish, all part of the writer's family history. Ambiguity about his father's wartime activities are echoed in McEvoy's uncertainty about his past. That French title turns out to be a translation of Via delle Botteghe Oscure, an address in Rome at which Modiano lived at one time. And so the book becomes a meditation on identity and memory/forgetting. It's an enigmatic book too. We're never quite sure about the nature and motivations of other characters such as Howard Luz. I found the semi-epistolary nature of the novel effective.

The novel ends with McEvoy/Stern looking at a childhood photo of a little girl crying because she has to stop playing. She has already turned the corner of the street, and do not our lives dissolve into the evening as quickly as this grief of childhood? It's a splendid ending.