Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas

Reading these three novellas (57, 67, and 80 pages respectively) was one of the stranger experiences I have had for some time. Every few pages, I found myself slipping into a kind of waking dream, in which the facts of the text would shimmer and rearrange themselves into something that was not in the text at all. Yes, I was tired. But even after an ample nap, I found the same thing happening. I can only conclude that it is an intended feature of Modiano's style. His narrators, like memory detectives, summon the names of places, people, and half-remembered details, but the result is not so much to clarify the past as to cloak it in still more mystery. It always surprised me when I came upon some reference to the afternoon hour or the bright sun, because all these memories gave the sensation of taking place in darkness, under cover of night and fog.As soon as Modiano's Nobel Prize was announced, I bought the first book I could get my hands on,  RUE DES BOUTIQUES OBSCURES  (translated as  MISSING PERSON ), in which a private detective with amnesia investigates the mystery of his own past. I found it an easy read (even in French) and a fine introduction to the author, but suspected that I would need to read more, since the prize was awarded for the body of his work rather than a single book. So I ordered another in French (not yet arrived) and these three in the fine English translation of Mark Polizziotti. The paradoxical result has been to confirm my suspicion about the wholeness of Modiano's oeuvre while still further blurring the nature of it... unless its essence is blur itself. I began to notice proper names cropping up in the novellas that I remembered from the novel, and after a while it became difficult to recall in which of the three stories a person, place, or event was first mentioned. Yet this is not surprising. The place is always Paris, especially its stairs, dark passages, and suburbs where tourists seldom go. And Modiano has said that all his fiction, regardless of its packaging, is "a kind of autobiography, but one that is dreamed up or imaginary.""Afterimage," the first novella in this collection (though the last to be published), sets down the narrator's memories of a largely forgotten photographer. Meeting him as a young man, he offers to catalogue his enigmatic photos of the Thirties and Forties, shortly before the artist himself leaves Paris and disappears. It is a story less important for the secrets it reveals than for the sad awareness that future generations may not even know that secrets existed. "Suspended Sentences," the second novella, is more frankly a childhood memoir. The narrator (called by his nickname Patoche) and his brother are sent to live with three women in a distant suburb while their mother is on an extended theatrical tour. Their own childhood mysteries (for example about the deserted chateau at the edge of the village) interlace gradually with real adult mysteries about the strange people who come to the house, and mysterious trips into Paris by sports car. "Flowers of Ruin," the final piece, begins with accounts of an unsolved murder from the Thirties. As the narrator tries to investigate it, it too combines with mysteries he discovers in his own time -- such as a Peruvian who sometimes passes himself off as a French Count, but whom the records show as having died at Dachau. The translator, in his excellent introduction, quotes Modiano as saying, "The more obscure and mysterious things remained, the more interested I became in them. I even looked for mystery where there was none."Although these are not primarily Holocaust books, their mysteries all go back to the period of the German occupation of Paris, which ended just before the author was born. I suspect that many of the names and places mentioned would have associations with older French readers that the most of us miss. For example, there is mention in several stories of the "Rue Lauriston gang." Google the street, and you will find one of the dirtier French secrets of the war. A secret in which Modiano's father appears to have been involved. A Jew, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned, but subsequently released. Why, and what did he have to do to stay free? All of Modiano's work that I have read so far or read about seems to be an indirect investigation of those mysteries. An investigation and an atonement."I hadn't moved from the window. Under the pouring rain, he crossed the street and went to lean against the retaining wall of the steps we had walked down shortly before. And he stood there, unmoving, his back against the wall, his head raised toward the building façade. Rainwater poured onto him from the top of the steps, and his jacket was drenched. But he did not move an inch. At that moment a phenomenon occurred for which I'm still trying to find an explanation: had the street lamp at the top of the steps suddenly gone out? Little by little, the man melted into the wall. Or else the rain, from falling on him so heavily, had dissolved him, the way water dilutes a fresco that hasn't had time to dry properly. As hard as I pressed my forehead against the glass and peered at the dark gray wall, no trace of him remained. He had vanished in that sudden way that I'd later notice in other people, like my father, which leaves you so puzzled that you have no choice but to look for proofs and clues to convince yourself these people had really existed."

I’ve heard Modiano is an acquired taste, and after this book of novellas (all originally published separately in France), it’s not hard to see why. I wouldn’t call these stories so much as reminisces, meditations on a memory from long ago and seeing what else it conjures up, following the memories to their ends, which are usually brought about more by forgetting the rest or time wiping away any other clues about people the narrator once knew. Despite this unorthodox approach to story telling, I loved it. It’s not for everyone, especially these novellas, which seem to be minor works, and although this was my first outing with the author, I’d probably recommend a more widely known book (like Missing Person, which I unfortunately have not had the chance to read, c’mon Amazon, put it up for the Kindle already!). It’s too bad the rating bar is only 1-5, because for me this book isn’t quite a 5 but a definite high 4.As others online have said, the first two novellas are quite good. At first they might seem disappointing, as they raise a lot of questions and then end with hardly any of them answered. But these stories linger in your mind. They also slowly build up, adding to each other to form a powerful cumulative effect. After the first story, Afterimage, about a man trying to recollect and gather everything about a photographer who wanted to be forgotten, I was left thinking, “That’s it?” After the second one, about two boys who are raised by a suspicious group of their parents’ friends while their guardians are off exploring the world, left me with a similar feeling, but also a desire for more.And the last one, entitled Flowers of Ruin, seems to be the least popular of the bunch, but I liked it a lot. What starts out as an investigation into a double lovers’ suicide that happened some years ago instead becomes a reflection of all the old buildings in Paris: all the history they’ve seen that links people together and how these sites are being torn down to make way for McDonald’s and other such chains. This is where the cumulative effect starts to show, as characters and events that occurred in the other novellas bleed into this one—I’ve been told that each Modiano book could be said to be a chapter in one large book, and already after these I’d have to agree. I can see why some might dislike Flowers of Ruin, and there is a lot about it that shouldn’t work, but Modiano’s crisp prose style, understated yet poetic, filled with descriptions and phrases as fleeting as memories, keeps it all fresh.Final thoughts: if you’re hesitant about Modiano, this is probably not the place to start. If you’ve read one of his better known works and are intrigued, then go for it. I’ve read that Modiano only gets better the more you read by him, and already after just this collection I can vouch for that claim. And if you’re desperate to read something by the author and can’t find anything else, go for it. Just give him another chance if it doesn’t strike your fancy.Can’t wait to get my hands on some of his other stuff!

I have read this author in French and this translation is marvellous!

Strange,interesting but first and last stories seemed drained of emotion although suffused with melancholy. The middle story I found much more vital and involving- the characters were described in enough detail for me to care about.

An interesting book, well written, interesting cover. Would read again.

I bought this because I thought I ought to read something from the 2014 Nobel prize winner of whome, like most Anglo-Saxons I had never heard.I don't know how good an introduction to Modiano's work these novellas are but they were the most immediately accessible on Kindle. As someone who spent much of his early career in Paris many decades ago I found the hints of Paris and Paris life as it was particularly fascinating. If you don't know Paris I wonder what the descriptions and hints of descriptions will do for you. Obviously the dreamy nostalgic reminiscences will appeal to some, they are often almost poetic (though I did wonder on occasion whether the translator had done him justice). But if, like me you hope for at least some sort of closure in a novel you will be disappointed. For example Flowers of Ruin opens with a historical mysterious double suicide and the reader is led to believe the narrator might throw some light on it a few decades later. In the event what it offers is the narrator's reminiscences of wandering round much the same territory as the suicides did on their last evening though they are largely forgotten about well before the end. Short novellas, short chapters make this good bedtime reading and those with genuine literary tastes and a passion for close reading will get more out of it than I did.

Patrick Modiano places the reader inside the mind of the main characters, viewing the people and environment with all their mystery, suspicion, darkness and even fatalism, all consequences of a treacherous and duplicitous Nazi occupation and French collaboration. Persons and events are revisited over time, revealing ever more confusion due to partially exposed, murky circumstances and seemingly criminal actions. No one is truly what they seem. These novellas taunt the reader with the search for truth and meaning but reveal only suppressed, uncertain memories, incomplete and shadowy persons whose roles, aspirations and ultimate destinies have been blotted out in a post war society.