دفتر العائلة

by Patrick Modiano, دانيال صالح (ترجمة), باتريك موديانو

هذه الرواية مؤلفة من خمسة عشر فصلاً وجيزاً يمكن قراءتها كما لو كانت قصصاً قصيرة مترابطة. هي خمس عشرة لحظة أو خمسة عشر وجهاً أساسيّاً تشكّل موجز سيرة ذاتيّة كتبها موديانو مراهناً على الكثافة، وعلى الإيحاء، مثلما فعل في “سلالة”، التي سبق أن ترجمت في هذه السلسلة. على هذه الوجوخ والأحداث والمفارقات ما فتئ الكاتب يلقي بصمات خياله الروائيّ، مموهاً هنا، ومضيفاً أو منقصاً هناك، سعي مزيد من الإضاءة. فضيلة هذه الكتابة على التناول التاريخيّ (على أهميته) تكمن في كونها تقدم الحدث وآثار الحدث على النفوس، أي أنها تعنى بتاريخانيته من جهة وببطانته الشورية من جهة أخرى.

ما يتجلى هنا هو تاريخ حقبة شكلت بوتقة تجربة الكاتب الإبداعية أو مصهرها، هو الذي قال عن الحرب العالمية الثانية في أحدى محاوراته: (( إنها هي التربة أو كومة السماد التي طلعت منها)).

Genres: Fiction, France, Nobel Prize, Novels, Family, Short Stories, Literary Fiction

297 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

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

[Ilse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abating shadows

For Patrick Modiano’s bevy of loyal readers, October 2019 appears glowing with promise: Family record, the English translation of his 1977 semi-autobiographical novel Livret de famille is coming up, and maybe even more thrilling, a new novel will see the light of day, Encre sympathique.

Published in 1977, Family Record constitutes a fascinating diptych with the even more overtly autobiographical Pedigree: A Memoir(2005), a detachedly told account of the first twenty years of his life, characterised by parental neglect and abandonment.

I sat at the desk. I felt an emptiness that I had known since childhood, from the moment I’d understood that people and things will leave you someday, will disappear.

These lines seem to crystallize the essence of Patrick Modiano’s writing, shaping the mental substance and tincture from which he spins all his novels. A analogous observation expressing that fundamental aching I encountered in Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas this summer, in which the narrator observes 'I had taken on this job because I refused to accept that people and things could disappear without a trace. How could anyone resign himself to that?'

The sense of anxiety and hurt brooding under these words which is connected to the transitory presence of people in his life sheds a light on the motives why Patrick Modiano and many of his alter ego protagonists turn into unwilling as well as relentless detectives of the often murky and distressing past - clarifying why Patrick Modiano and his characters seem forever chasing ghosts, forever gauging their roots, too: 'I convinced myself that it was where I would find my roots, my home, my native soil, everything I didn’t have'.

Composed out of fifteen short vignettes moving backwards and forwards in time, a recollection of memories from various periods is set in motion the moment the narrator is about to register his new-born daughter. Meeting an old friend from his father, requiring his livret de famille (a civil document, in which marriages, death, and children born are registered), he is reminded of the unsteadiness and unreliability of his own civil status, as the ‘livret’ reveals his parents were married during the second world war under false identities. This spurs him to construct a more appropriate ‘family record’ out of flashes he remembers on his parents, his Flemish mother, a young actress from Antwerp ending up in Paris; an uncle; a notorious French collaborator who fled to Switzerland after the war; his father ever entangled in shady business affairs; the apartment on the Quai de Conti where he lived as a child; a first love who kindles him into writing. Information on his parents, who mostly left Modiano and his brother to their own devices, dumping their children with vague acquaintances, is scarce and can only be retrieved obliquely:

I thought about my parents. I was certain that, if I wanted to meet witnesses and friends from their youth, it would always be in places like this: disused hotel lobbies in far-off countries, over which floated a scent of exile, harbouring creatures who had never had a home base or defined civil status.

What is fictional and what autobiographical is as per usual hard to distinguish, when the narrator speaks of himself as Patrick or mentions the name of his brother Rudy (who died when Modiano was twelve), some of these vignettes seem more directly autobiographical while others are more muddled. People who cross the narrator’s path are vaporous and enigmatic, like the blonde Geneviève Catelain; some scenes have a Proustian ambiance (membership of the Jockey club is mentioned when the young narrator joins his father to stay in a duke’s chateau for a hunting party); places (Paris, but also Nice and Biarritz, Rome, Tunisia) are foggy and enveloped in a ‘blanket of silence’.

Readers who have encountered Modiano before will definitely recognize familiar themes and ingredients like the boarding school in Switzerland, the French Gestapo headquarters, the shady role and dubious affairs of Alberto Modiano, Modiano’s Jewish father, during the war, people disappearing in vague circumstances, memory and forgetting, the attempts to recapture the ever hazier contours of a bygone era by stirring up the past.


(Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brasserie Lipp)

Would I recommend reading this book? Having read ten of Modiano’s books now, ‘Family record’ to me ranks among his most melancholic and beautiful novels. Some sentences cut right through me:

I was happy. I had no more memory. My amnesia would thicken with each passing day, like a callus. No more past. No more future. Time would halt and everything would blend into the blue mist of Lake Geneva. I had reached the state I called ‘Switzerland of the heart’.
And

Memory itself is corroded by acid, and of all those cries of suffering and horrified faces from the past, only echoes remain, growing fainter and fainter, vague outlines. Switzerland of the heart.


(Patrick Modiano by Olivier Roller)

It is that shattering friction, the discord between Modiano’s search for identity and his longing for oblivion that make some of his novels so haunting and in a sense boundlessly sad, leaving an imprint of forlornness that seems to grow deeper by every next novel I read by him.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Yale University Press and the author for giving me the chance to read an advanced copy of Family Record.

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

I tried to fight the heaviness that pulled me backward, and dreamed of liberating myself from my poisoned memory. I would have given anything to be an amnesiac.

This autobiographical novel consists of fifteen interrelated chapters in which Modiano, expertly and with a few brushstrokes, paints his memories of the past and offers us a glimpse of the days gone by, the places long vanished and the people long deceased.

Memory itself is corroded by acid, and of all those cries of suffering and horrified faces from the past, only echoes remain, growing fainter and fainter, vague outlines.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Under her red bathrobe, she had a scent that I’ve sometimes recognized fleetingly on a passerby. At such moments, I relive the bedroom in the gray light of late afternoon, the fluid, prolonged sound of cars on rainy days, her eyes with their glints of mauve, her mouth, and the magic of her pale buttocks. When we managed to get up earlier, we went for walks in the Bois de Boulogne, by way of the lakes or the Pre Catelan. We talked about the future. We would get a dog. Maybe we’d take a trip.”

Patrick Modiano has this 23 year old lover when he is 17 and first trying to become a writer. He is disappointed to discover that all the books she buys him are purchased with money from her rich, Argentinian lover. Okay, so some of the romance surrounding those books is a bit tainted, but he still keeps all the books she gives him and is still thumbing through them many decades later. Knowing Modiano from his work, I can guess that he has wonderful memories attached to each gift, regardless of where the money came from to buy them for him. She offers him expensive clothes, and he opts for books instead. Certainly, he is a man after my own heart.

This is an untrustworthy book. The blurbs for it tout that it is a mixture of autobiography and lurid invention. It is, of course, impossible to separate the two, so in a sense it could be said that Modiano is rewriting or enhancing his life story. He is certainly making the job of his future biographer more difficult. What is truth, and what is complete fabrication? I can think of a few moments in my history that I would like to touch up with a bit of rose colored tint.

I do hope the 23 year old lover who bought him books is true.

This is a collection of vignettes that do not really form a cohesive story. If anything, they add more murkiness to the backstory of Modiano. There are wonderful, insightful observations that attest to his developing skills as a writer. He berates himself at one point for remembering pointless details, but the best fiction, in my opinion, is rife with seemingly meaningless reflections that actually make a scene come vividly to life.

If you haven’t read Patrick Modiano before, this is not a good place to start. I’d read some of his psychological novellas first and circle back to this one after you’ve become better acquainted with him. So even though I was oddly discombobulated as I tried to ascertain what was lurid invention and what was some version of the truth, I still enjoyed poking around inside his head on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Any truth is only based on a percentage of fact, and that percentage is a far cry from 100%.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like finding a worn box in an attic full of sepia-toned photos of life gone by. The individual pictures are just snapshots but, taken together, speak volumes of life, history, identity, etc.

Family Record begins with the narrator trying to register his newborn daughter Zenaide with the city. He meets an old friend of his father by chance and asks questions of his father who disappeared when he was a child. but gets little upon his request, other than the knowledge that his parent's marriage was established under false identities. His daughter does get registered - in the nick of time - effectively establishing her identity in the world. So begins the essential theme of the book - identity and history.

The rest of the book carries on in vignettes - about his father, his grandmother, his mother, himself. Some are, perhaps, based in truth and others are clearly based in fantasy, but most are filled with vibrant characters that come off the page through Modiano's sublime descriptive narrative style.

I can't say that the vignette-like style didn't get on my nerves at times it did. My brain wants a linear narrative and had some trouble adapting to this style throughout. But life isn't always so linear (while always being linear, if you know what I mean) so, I stuck it through and it worked for me in the end. Some vignettes were a tad more boring than others. However, Noble prize-winning Modiano is a fantastic writer and it is worth it to take this peek into his creative mind.

Thank you to NetGalley and Yale University Press for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano is among a small handful of my favorite living novelists. I find his novels, although sometimes brief, deeply affecting. Modiano is a master of lost and found memories, mysterious and unsettled personal and familial histories, and nostalgia for lost urban landscapes. His novels often skitter over decades, moving back and forth through time as memories are recalled and personal histories reconstructed.

True to Modiano’s typical plots, his Family Record — published in French in 1977 and in English not until September 2019 — follows a seemingly disjointed and sometimes confusing chronological arc. Family Records’s fifteen brief chapters touch on three decades of the narrator Patrick’s life, told retrospectively from when he was apparently thirty, his wife almost twenty-five, and parents of a one year old daughter. We know that the October War of 1973 has passed, and we know how important it was to Patrick: ”That evening, I sensed that something was coming to an end. My youth? I was certain that nothing would ever be the same, and I can pinpoint the exact moment when everything changed for me” (p55). As typical with Modiano time lines, the narrator adds complications and confusion: ”my memory stretched back before my birth. I was certain, for instance, that I’d lived in Paris under the Occupation because I recalled certain individuals from that time, as well as small, disturbing details that weren’t in any history book” (p75). And Patrick even speaks of his memories of his wife and daughter from ”another life” from which he ”retained a vague recollection and the odd impression that in those days, I had a wife and a little girl, the same ones as today. How could I pick up the traces of that former life?” (p144) In other chapters, the narrator tries to reconstruct his mother’s life as an eighteen year old aspiring film actress in Antwerp, before his birth, and his grandmother’s life in the 1930s.

The fuzziness of Family Record’s timeline perfectly matches the fuzziness of our asa well as Patrick’s memories. The chronological fuzziness also reflects and reinforces the narrator’s fuzzy knowledge of his own background: ”The fact is, I don’t know where I was born or what names my parents using at the time. A navy-blue piece of paper, folded in four, was stapled to this family record: my parents’ marriage certificate. My father appears under an assumed name because the wedding had taken place during the Occupation.” (pp3-4).

I’ve now read more than fifteen of Modiano’s novels. Many are superb, and nest in my consciousness and memory in odd and unexpected ways, occasionally making me wonder if the memories are mine or those of his novels’ main characters or mine. Other Modiano novels are merely excellent, markedly different in tone and construction from those of other contemporary novelists. A very few Modiano novels have been slogs, but always worth the effort. Family Record belongs in the latter category: brief but difficult to follow. In Family Record, the usually confusing Modiano timeframe, which often just adds to the appeal and interest of a Modiano novel , becomes all the more confusing by the addition of episodes and seemingly random characters from Patrick’s and his parents’ past, as well as my wondering what’s Modiano’s actual Family Record and what’s Modiano’s richly imagined Family Record.

For those of you seeking a more comprehensive review, I highly recommend Ilse’s.

3.5 Modiano stars

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My childhood was impacted by a move to another state, leaving behind my family, friends, and school. I was not the same child afterward. I did not live in the present for a long time. Memories of the past were held dear; I was awash in nostalgia and longing to restore what I had lost consumed me.

My grandfather wrote about his childhood in the early 1900s and I inherited his family genealogy records. Decades later I became a genealogy researcher. My father wrote his memoirs of growing up in the Depression and WWII years and running a business in the 1950s. Perhaps it was already in my blood to look back and record life. A few years back I wrote about my life on my blog, dipping into my diaries and scrapbooks to rediscover what I had forgotten.

Or misremembered. Somehow, our memories are not truly all fact, there is an element of fiction, rewriting, that happens in our brains. We naturally turn our experience into a novel, a story with meaning, a vehicle used to demonstrate the truth as we would have it.

"Memory itself is corroded by acid, and of all those cries of suffering and horrified faces from the past, only echoes remain, growing fainter and fainter vague outlines." ~from Family Record by Patrick Modiano

French Literature is my weak spot and I had not heard of Pulitzer Prizer winner Patrick Modiano. The cover and book title, Family Record, caught my eye and the blurb cinched my interest in requesting the galley.

Modiano shares his family and personal history through what are essentially short stories, glimpses that skip across time, weaving together a thoughtful consideration of experience.

He tells about returning to the places of his childhood and youth and encountering people who knew his family. He records meetings with strangers with mysterious pasts. And of the beautiful woman who pretended to be the daughter of a once-famous entertainer and who asked him to write his biography, setting Modiano on a career path.

He recreates the romantic meeting of his parents in occupied Paris and recalls the uncle who longed to live in the country in an old mill. He tells the story of losing himself to the present in Switzerland at twenty years old and seeing the man who collaborated with the Nazis to deport thousands from France, deciding to confront him.

"...And in Paris, the survivors of the camps waited in striped pajamas, beneath the chandeliers of the Hotel Lutetia. I remember all of it."~ from Family Record by Patrick Modiano

He begins with the birth of his daughter and the rush to obtain her birth registration and he ends with his daughter in his arms, a being yet without memory.

It is a lovely read, quiet and thoughtful.

The publisher granted me access to a free egalley through NetGalley in exchange for my fair and unbiased review.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of vignettes dealing with family memories written in the 1970’s and indirectly concerned with occupied France. The author was born in 1945 and is fascinated by the period. Some interesting real-life characters make an appearance, e.g. Leonardus Nardus (formerly Leonardus Solomon) and his daughter Flory.

All of the pieces are good, most of them are excellent.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano attempts to piece together memories from his youth to offset the sadness from his fragmented and uncaring upbringing. The very title -- Family Record -- is ironic precisely because, in his case, his family abandoned him. Each chapter provides another shard from his past in hopes that a clear pattern will emerge.

Like most of Modiano's work, this short novel is suffused with the sadness of things. Because his life lack the grounding necessary for the author to feel satisfied in his own skin, the shards never seem to fit together right.

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

Son relatos construidos con una frágil y delgada neblina de realidad, pero tan modianescos como todo lo demás escrito por este autor.

[أروى الجفري · Rating 2 out of 5]

التصنيف الذي يوضع للعمل الأدبي على الغلاف مهم ، فهو يعطيك فكرة مبدئية عما ستقرأ، هذا العمل تم تصنيفه كرواية لكنه بعيد تماما عنها ، حتى أنه ليس بسيرة ذاتية إنما مقتطفات من حياة الكاتب و أسرته كُتبت بشكل غير مرتب، وصلت للصفحة 97 ولم أستطع الاستمرار ، ولا أدري إن كنت سأعود لها في يوم ما .

[dalal · Rating 3 out of 5]

خمسة عشرا فصلا من ذكريات يلفها الغموض وملامح شخوص لا تبدو واضحة!
تحتاج لأن تكون بذهن صاف لتتماسك الأحداث في ذهنك، والا ستتوه أكثر.
القراءة الثانية لموديانو سأحتاج أن اقرأ له أكثر لأفهم السبب الذي استحقت كتبه جائزة نوبل؟

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

To celebrate the birth of his first daughter, Modiano adapted his eternal quest for his identity from the ruins of a murky past (born during the French occupation, half Jewish, abandonned by both parents, growing up in an atmosphere of vague cons and trafficks). Since his birth was not recorded on his family's book, a purely French official document, awarded during the civil wedding ceremony and aimed at recording births, deaths & divorces, he decided that he would create such a book for his daughter, recording memories, snapshots, snippets and stories instead of vital statistics. It is a lovely book, full of his love for this newborn....

[Mason Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I continue to very much like nearly everything by Modiano. This is an odd book in some ways, being a collection of short pieces that may or may not be from the author's point of view. Most are, very clearly, semi-autobiographical or at least written that way. Others feel, due to the time and place, possibly not. But all of them are written first-person, so it's hard to be sure. In Modiano's typical fashion, these pieces are about feeling, mood, and place more than they are about plot and story. Which isn't to say they lack those things, but you read these to be enmeshed in the mist of place and atmosphere that he creates. It's such that I love simply reading about his characters walking across Paris; it feels like being there myself. Across these stories, he weaves a thread about memory, identity, and family, as he often does. This book arcs from the first story, of his daughter's birth and family registration, to the last, a simple taxi ride with his wife and daughter. In-between we meet myriad characters, many shady and mysterious, as his life and his parents' intertwine, in and around the Occupation of Paris and the people involved. A wonderful, shadowy, read.

[Salomé LNF · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un livre très intéressant et une écriture troublante au début. Il faut le lire en entier pour comprendre certaines parties du roman.
Attention! L’écriture peut ne pas plaire à tout le monde.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano is not a reliable narrator. This is a collection of autobiographical vignettes which are not necessarily literally true. Although Modiano is very well known (Goncourt, Nobel), I haven't read any of his other work; one reviewer here says this isn't the best place to start and I can believe that. Modiano has a lot of backstory and it probably helps if you're aware of that before the start. I remember seeing him interviewed by Bernard Pivot on Bouillon de Culture and he came across as a slightly odd and introverted person.

The title Livret de Famille evokes the theme well; Modiano explores family, identity and memory through these different episodes. Some of these "memories" are of his parents before he was born; others are perhaps based on real incidents but include a large dose of fantasy (notably the episode at the country estate).

I found it a bit uneven. Some chapters really engaged me; I particularly liked the opening one where he registers his newborn daughter's birth and by chance meets an old friend of his father, the one set in Switzerland, and the penultimate one where he visits the flat overlooking the Seine where he grew up. Others left me indifferent. Probably best read in short bursts, a chapter at a time.

[Catherine Oughtibridge]

In the northern-hemisphere autumn of 2020, in the few weeks we had where the bookshops were open, I walked into the spacious old textile mill at Saltaire and purchased a book entitled Family Record. An impulse buy. I’d run my fingers down the book’s spine, let it fall open in my palms and felt the quality of the thick paper it was printed on. I hadn’t heard of the book, but I’d heard of the author – a Frenchman by the name of Modiano Patrick – and I like a nicely printed book.

The first Modiano book I read, and fell in love with, was a collection of novellas, published together under the title Suspended Sentences. How I came to own Suspended Sentences or even when I read it is a mystery to me. My copy is a version translated by Mark Polizzotti and printed in 2014 after Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature; Family Record has the same translator, publisher and a similar shiny mark of a prize-winning author on the cover. I think I bought Suspended Sentences in Leeds on some shopping trip that had led me to seek comfort in Waterstones, but it could have been anywhere. I know I had it sitting on my shelf for some time before I finally read it, and I’d bought it because it was modern and French and therefore like nothing else I was reading, but although I am certain that I have read it – an impression remains – I cannot be sure when. I wrote no review and appear to have recorded it on no list.

I took the book, Family Record, to the till so that I could pay, and the masked man behind the counter gushed with enthusiasm for my choice. He hadn’t read Suspended Sentences – which I recommended to him – but he had read other books by Modiano and been enthralled.

If you are one of those people who like to be pulled through a novel, dropped from one cliff-hanging chapter decisively into the action of the next, then Modiano is not the author for you. If he plots, there remains no evidence. Nor does he tie up any loose ends. In fact, he seems to go out of the way to make the threads of his stories fray, their threadbare fabric might be full of character, but these characters don’t necessarily do anything. I read his work hoping for demystification and close the book mystified as to how I can be so in love with the clarity of his writing and yet endlessly disappointed by its obscurity.

In introducing the novellas of Suspended Sentences, and reflecting on his work translating the stories, Polizzotti states “Generally speaking, and despite the ambiguities in his narrative strategy, Modiano’s prose style is straightforward and clear – by which I do not mean simple – and I have aimed above all to preserve that limpid quality in this translation.”

I look at a page at random and I try to work out what it is that I like so much about his writing style. He would be, if one were running a writing class, an eloquent example of the power of varying sentence length. Watch the full stops and you find short sentences embedded in longer sentences, snuggled in the middle of them, pretending simplicity without ever being simple. But that’s not it. There are staccato moments, especially perhaps when we’re in the mind of a boy who’s dealing with what’s laid out in front of him one step at a time. It’s memory, but like when you’ve lost your keyring and you’re trying to piece back together where you’ve been, vocalizing the options, wondering what you could have possibly been doing with your hands that led to the abandonment of the door key. Which surface did you drop them on?

Then there’s a great repetition held in the verbs. By which I don’t mean that the verbs themselves seem to repeat, they don’t. Or well, sometimes they do, but not excessively so. But that verbs are used to build up the scene, give the texture of the scene. They don’t tend to be complex or flowery verbs. They tend to be quite common verbs. Yet they build up gradually, one after another, acting to give weight to a character.

As an example, take a look at these verbs, used in a scene opened at random from the novella Afterimage to describe a man’s movements.

… stationed, waited, crossed, planted (himself), crossed, standing, blocked, turned, following, stopped, folded, stood out, stood, shrugged, strode off…

Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas pg 29-31.

So I’m left feeling that although there’s something ethereal about the overall pattern of Modiano’s fragments, each individually is weighted and solid. Through some hard-working verbs, his work grounds itself in the names of people and places, dates and ages, car models and the patterns of wallpaper.

Either way, I’ve two more of his books ordered and shipped and I’m hoping they’ll be gracing my front door in a day or two.

[Jean-Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je retrouve immédiatement son écriture et le plaisir de se laisser emporter. On retrouve des noms de personnes ou de rues déjà rencontrés - ou quasi - précédemment. La forme courte de ces histoires me semble bien convenir à ce qu'il écrit. Je continuerai.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano shares a compelling and artfully woven stream of experiences in Family Record. On the one hand, this book has value as a literary work...on the other, it is a powerful segment of history. Modiano both utilizes and elevates the autobiographical mode.

Highly recommended reading.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second book in the collection of ten I am currently reading by Modiano. It is a difficult book to read -- it took me almost a week to read 135 large-print pages. It is in an experimental style, and I'm not sure the experiment was totally successful. However, unlike many experimental novels of the mid-twentieth century, the style was not arbitrarily chosen; what Modiano is trying to express here could not be expressed in any other form.

The basic themes of the novel -- as in Villa Triste and, judging by the reviews, most of Modiano's work -- are personal identity and memory. It consists of fifteen separate "episodes", each a few pages long, from different stages of the narrator's life. They are all written in the first person, and the narrator is occasionally referred to as "Patrick" or "Modiano". The problem is not only that they are in no particular order, but that they seem to have no connections; with the partial exception of the penultimate episode,no character except the "I" appears in more than one episode, there are no allusions in any of the stories to anything which happens in any other, most of them take place in different cities and apart from the fact that they are in one "novel" there would be no indication that the "I" represents the same person between any two stories. I use the word "stories" but in fact none of them is a complete story; they are really just fragmentary memories and all end inconclusively. Given the short length of the episodes, and the fact that Modiano -- like LeClezio (and the ultimate model for modern French literature, Flaubert) -- favors very detailed descriptions of physical appearance, clothing, and surrounding environment, much of each story is spent establishing the setting leaving very little room for actual events. I found it difficult to become involved in the book because by the time I started to become interested in a story it ended and I was back in the setting up of the next episode. I can sympathize with the reviewers on Amazon who abandonned the book as boring. There is however a certain interest in what he is trying to do; the lack of connection is I think deliberately calling into question whether memory can really establish a continuous personal identity.

The first episode puts forward the theme; the narrator has a two-day old daughter Zenaide (the author's oldest daughter in the photo essay at the beginning of the collection is named Zina, which is a nickname for Zenaida), and he is trying to get her "civil status" registered at the city hall (what we would call a birth certificate.) On the way, he runs into an old friend of his father purely by chance (chance and coincidence play a large part in most of the stories, but unlike an old coincidence-prone Romantic novel the chance element is highlighted rather than taken for granted, as if to say that life is made up of improbable occurences.) The story revolves around the effort to get the birth registered -- the clerks don't approve the name -- and the narrator's desire to learn more about his father (who disappeared when he was young.) In the end, the name is registered and there is some reflection on the importance of that establishment of identity, which the narrator and his parents never had; but the episode ends before we learn if the old friend can give the narrator any information about his parents.

I won't try to summarize the other episodes, but all have some things in common -- characters who have unknown pasts, who are living under assumed names, or trying to establish or hide who they really are; searching for physical evidence to verify memories, or alternatively trying to forget them. One interesting idea (also mentioned in Villa Triste) is that the narrator has detailed memories of events in prewar France and under the Occupation, although he was not born until 1945.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patrick Modiano was born in France in 1945. He is a French novelist and won the Nobel prize in literature in 2014, Most of his novels had not been translated into English before winning the Nobel prize. This is my first time reading his work, translated by Mark Polizzotti.

In Family Record, Modiano weaves together stories of his complicated and mysterious family history. One of the major themes is identity, and the struggle we each face in finding our own. Patrick seems to be Searching for answers about his family's past. Particularly, his father's during the troubled period of the Paris Occupation in WWII. Patrick jumps around from past to present, giving glimpses of his life and the moments that defined him. As well as the mysteries he has yet to figure out. I am left wanting to know more about his Fathers story and I am left with many questions.

This was a very interesting read, I am looking forward to reading more by this Author.

[Tina Izguerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book. Both the historical and autobiographical aspects of this story are absolutely fascinating. It is extremely well written as well.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I am not mistaken, this is the English translation of the French original “Livret de familie”. It is an excellent book and the translator did a great job at keeping Modiano’s style intact.

[Pauline Van etc. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In « Livret de famille », Modiano reflects on his childhood and young adult memories in 15 different chapters. His memories are not completely presented as an autobiography but as an artistic re-interpretation. It starts with the birth of his first daughter which makes him question his own personal records and origins.

Modiano suffered from the lack of attention and care from both of his parents as a child. In this book, he mostly tries to explore their past. He particularly wants to understand what happened with his dad during the Second World War. Although his dad was hiding his Jewish origins, he had mysterious jobs that were probably linked with the German collaborators in occupied France.

Most of Modiano’s stories are endowed with adventure, mystery and fascinating characters. Besides, his style is quite clear which makes him engaging and easy to read.

[Nolwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mon premier Modiano, lu en une seule journée grâce aux transports en commun et à l'insomnie -ce n'est pas pour me déplaire, et cela s'alignait bien avec la création d'atmosphère, où on se tient à la surface des événements (tiens, un peu comme le Désert des Tartares) dans une époque qui favorise les faux-semblants et les cassures (WWII, tiens, un peu comme Éducation Européenne). J'ai aimé les tranches de vie, je suis satisfaite du livre et de sa brièveté.

[Sevim Tezel Aydın · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dans Livret de Famille, Modiano tisse une toile sur sa famille compliquée, sa mémoire et son identité. Il voyage entre le passé et le présent pour se comprendre des activités suspectes de son père pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Il essaie de se définir comme un individu. Je n’ai pas aimé le style, mais c’était une lecture engageante.

[Jaafar Melhem · Rating 1 out of 5]

لا أعلم السبب الذي إستحق معه هذا الكتاب جائزة نوبل!
ليست رواية بل مقتطفات من سيرة ذاتية غير واضحة بالشكل الكافي.
توصيفات عاديّة جدًا لواحدة من أهمّ الحقبات في تاريخ البشرية، وتوثيق غير دقيق لمعاناة شعوب بأسرها.

[ٰسلمى · Rating 4 out of 5]

الفصل الأول وفصل الملك فاروق هم الأعظم .

[Bimana Novantara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel ini pertama kali terbit pada 1977 di Prancis dan merupakan salah satu karya awal Modiano, tetapi terjemahan bahasa Inggrisnya baru diterbitkan 2019 lalu oleh penerbit salah satu kampus Ivy League di Amerika. Saya membelinya dengan harga empat puluh ribu saja di sebuah bazar buku di Kuningan awal tahun lalu bersama sejumlah buku lain yang juga dijual dengan harga miring. Ini adalah buku Modiano kedelapan yang saya baca, dan semua bukunya memiliki tema yang sama, yaitu, jika diistilahkan, “the persistence and unreliability of memory.” Dalam novel ini ia menulis dalam lima belas bab, dengan variasi antara yang panjang dan yang sangat pendek, yang sekilas terlihat seperti tidak berhubungan satu sama lain, sehingga membuat novel ini terasa seperti kumpulan cerpen. Namun, sesuai judulnya, inti dari novel tipis ini adalah usaha Modiano untuk mengumpulkan jejak-jejak ingatan tentang dirinya di masa lalu, tentang kedua orang tuanya yang menikah pada masa pendudukan Jerman di Paris, dan tentang orang-orang yang pernah menjalin hubungan dengan dirinya dan orangtuanya. Secara umum saya suka dengan tulisan Modiano karena ia selalu memberi kesan akan tempat (sense of place) yang kuat dalam semua ceritanya. Membaca cerita-ceritanya seperti membaca cerita yang sama berulang kali namun dengan variasi detail yang berbeda, tanpa harus mendapatkan kesimpulan, klimaks, atau akhir yang jelas, yang menjadikannya seakan-akan dibuat lebih untuk dirasakan, bukan untuk dipahami. Hingga kini Modiano sudah menulis lebih dari tiga puluh buku. Rata-rata setiap novel yang ia tulis memiliki ketebalan di bawah 200 halaman. Ia masih aktif menulis sampai sekarang dan terakhir ia menerbitkan buku pada 2023 lalu. Kalau di kemudian hari saya menemukan buku-bukunya lagi yang saya belum baca, saya pasti akan beli dan membacanya, apa pun judulnya dan tanpa terlalu memedulikan sinopsis ceritanya.

[Michael David · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some books where effort comes to me to piece together the occurrences within it. Pale Fire was one, and the Critique of Pure Reason was another. Modiano's Family Record also seems to invite the reader to piece it together, but I couldn't be bothered since I think it's impossible. In his conception, for instance, Sessue Hayakawa's wife was not Japanese (Chapter XIV). In this vein, the memory of Modiano's meeting with "Flo Nardus" is also a figment of his imagination. This is evidence that he wished to portray memory and history as malleable, so I simply read the novel as 15 autofictional vignettes.

As there's really little in common among the chapters except feuilletons of his imagined family members, there's little to make things stick for me. While Modiano writes concisely, and quite beautifully, at that, the only chapter that made me thought that the vignette was brilliant was that of Denise Dressel. In his youthful affair with an attractive demimonde, he attempts to reconstruct the history of her father. What he creates is also just another autofictional tale, because pictures of Harry Dressel's dog were the only palpable proof of Dressel's existence. What makes this vignette tower above the others is its emotional closeness to the tragedy of a love that wasn't meant to be. Other vignettes were written by Modiano in a more clinical manner, as typified by his short conversation while on a car ride with his wife and one-year-old daughter.

While well-written, the book is uneven and isn't a cohesive read. The emotional distance also detracts from my enjoyment of the novel. The prose, however, occasionally scintillates, but there are other Nobel laureates I would like to spend more of my time on.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was, I believe, the fourteenth book I've read by Patrick Modiano. I have never been so taken with an author's writing as I have with this one. He is like a modern day minimalist Marcel Proust.

Modiano's books are explorations of his present and future life in relationship to his own personal past as well as the past of his family, his country (France) and the place he calls home, Paris. These explorations are mysterious and almost fantastical. Some of what he tells us is based upon fact while others are molded into a narrative Modiano creates on his own. His books are not meant to be historical in nature. Rather, it seems to me that Modiano's reason for writing about the things he does is his realization that we cannot live effectively in the present if we do not understand our past. The books he writes are his way of trying to gain answers that will provide an understanding of himself, his relationship to his family, his country and his home town.

Family Record is a series of vignettes that tell the stories of Modiano and his family. Time, like in all his books, is not linear in his presentation of the stories he shares with us. We receive some facts, others are omitted. It is this mystery that grabs the reader. The prose is straightforward and captivating in its simplicity. If plot is not that important to you, I highly recommend any of Patrick Modiano's books to you.