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

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People disappear one day and we notice that we knew nothing abut them, not even their real identity, says Roland but it could be the epitaph of any Modiano novel. I lost track of my self, and unhappily - facing the world, head on - eventually recovered it in the wrong way. Stroll along the sleazy side streets of la Ville Lumière, drink with the regulars at the Café Condé and share Louki and Roland’s aimless meandering through the dark underbelly of the city. Later a photographer, who may not be what he seems, takes photos of them and publishes them in a book.

Four men who have known her, most of them as a visitor to the cafe in the Latin quarter that she also frequented for a while, are trying to track her down. What distinguishes his work is the palpable sense of loss felt by the narrators, nostalgia so strong it hurts. Similarly, if it’s a personal memoir you’re after, you’d better steer clear; here there’s no unequivocal ‘I’ that knows who he or she is and conveys events or reminiscences in a linear manner. This is my first experience of Modiano and I am grateful to the 21st Century Literature group for choosing it for the February 2018 group read because I doubt I would have picked it up otherwise.

He previously won the 2012 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the 2010 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for lifetime achievement, the 1978 Prix Goncourt for Rue des boutiques obscures , and the 1972 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for Les Boulevards de ceinture . Four narrators, a student from a café, a private detective hired by an aggrieved husband, the heroine herself and one of her lovers, construct a portrait of Jacqueline Delanque, otherwise known as Louki. Gradually she explores further afield, bumping into the drug world through a chance meeting with Jeanette Gaul, known ominously as “Death’s Head”.

Interesting, Tony… I’ve read a couple of his books and they seemed very much of a muchness, and I wasn’t entirely convinced by his vagueness. But it is only flawed in that it resorts to “the (comforting) crook of elbows and knees" instead of blunt action. I've always believed that certain places are like magnets and draw you towards them should you happen to walk within their radius.

She turns instead to a young man almost as aimless and adrift as she, but who perhaps loves her all the same. All this rush of the Self to the world, and then against it, of the Self to the unrealizable desire, of the tragedy of awareness of the human condition, have a charm which only life has, and which Modiano captures in an absolutely authentic prose. Some of the entanglements feel like floating on air, whilst others have a more deep and meaningful purpose. Un jour de cafard, sur la couverture du livre que Guy de Vere m’avait prêté : Louise du Néant, j’ai remplacé au stylo bille le prénom par le mien.