So You Don't Get Lost In The Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

Patrick Modiano is a French novelist and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature, whose works blend time and rememberance. Exploring his autofiction style in more than 40 books, he is often compared to Marcel Proust, bluring the lines between the past, the present, the memories both held and lost.

Neighborhood is an unexpected detective story of a reclusive writer drawn back into his own past. Jean Dragane receives a phone call; someone has found his address book at the station. Indeed, he had lost it. Written on the grey cover was: If found return this notebook to. If the stranger had not phoned, he would have totally forgotten about it.

Giles and his friend Chantal meet Jean in a cafe. Giles has read all of Jean's books, and feels that he knows him. He would like to know more about a name seen in the address book - Guy Torstel - but Jean has no recollection of this man. However, the name does appear in Jean's first book Le Noir de l'ete, page 47, a certain Guy Torstel. Over the next few days, Jean recalls his past: indeed he met a man with that name as a youth, the night he began writing the book, in the house he used to live in with his mother, whom he does not even know is still alive.

Jean recalls another Chantal, whose husband left her behind when he gambled, much like Giles does with his Chantal. In fact, Giles is living in the same flat as Jean did back when he knew Chantal.

Giles has compiled notes for a book he is writing in which Guy Torstel figures. Perhaps they could write it together. His dense notes contained a passport photo of an unknown boy, and the name of another woman, a certain Annie Astrand, whom Jean knew as a child. The night he met Guy Torstel he began writing Le Noir de l'ete, specifically as a coded message to Annie, perhaps for her to read and recognize, a singular memory of a photo taken.

Jean is a man in search of his past, the memories detached over time to the extent he has become a stranger to himself. Swirling coincidences and details of his life reflected in a distorted mirror for him to examine, or decline.

This is my first Patrick Modiano novel, and I was completely drawn in. It is familiar territory for past readers of his work, wandering through the fog of memory, the puzzle of identity and existence. The majority of his other work is historical dealing with the mania of occupied France during the war, and the shameful treatment of Jews. This dream-like novel of contemplation and loss may be more accessible to readers, it's neo-noir style a perfect framework to examine the past, as in life "we just lie back and allow ourselves to float along calmly over the deep waters, with our eyes closed."

It raises as many questions as it answers - in the reader, as well. I began to remember and question events in my life I had long forgotten.

I highly recommend his writing, and will seek out his other works.

Enjoyably mystifying.

"The best kind of mystery, the kind that never stops haunting you" - Entertainment Weekly

2014 / Tradeback / 155 pages