In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)

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In the first pages, we are told of a café regular and the notebook in which for years he records the times, dates and names of visitors to Le Condé, while elsewhere we encounter a copy of a police report, an invitation card kept for decades and even a list of book recommendations – which all prove to be useless.

Enfin, c’est Roland, le narrateur au nom d’emprunt et au rôle complexe réunissant à peu près les rôles joués par tous les autres narrateurs, qui recueille les fils narratifs et porte l’histoire à sa fin, sans la dérober de sa marge de mystère.

But they do this invariably out of a sense of deprivation, a deficit in the present that they are trying to fill with that past.

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. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The differences are that there are multiple narrators (four to be precise) and that there is a specific theme, as we shall see. Louki's portrait is sketched by four narrators, each of them in his or her own way a drifter through life who seeks refuge among the friendly and slightly decadent atmosphere of a bar at night. With this epigraph by Guy Debord I feel ready to dig into my first mystery novel by Patrick Modiano and discover what is so special about his stories to merit a Nobel Prize in literature.Unless you are familiar with the streets and places there, it's hard to picture the setting of this story. Louki, whose real name is Jacqueline Delanque, is refracted through the accounts of four different narrators (one of them herself), none of whom create a whole picture. But through flashbacks and other characters – and in one of the four chapters, from Louki herself – we gradually come to understand her troubled and impoverished upbringing. The only thing I could have done to make this reading experience more French would have been to smoke Gitanes and wear a beret at a rakish angle.

The other three – (Les Chants de Maldoror, Les Illuminations and The Lost Horizon) – are far better-known.Non seulement le temps des événements est imprécis (échappé à la contrainte historique et mesuré seulement en durée toute pure, pour employer un terme bergsonien), mais la géographie parisienne est également vague, les noms cachent la vraie identité car ils sont choisis, non portés et les émotions changent continuellement la perspective. However, even without that knowledge, the writing style, which is very minimalist, along with the indirect discovery of a lot of the story, makes for a very atmospheric read.