The Black Notebook

July 15, 2016
"Around us, you're in danger of catching leprosy": French Nobel Prize winner Modiano (Villa Triste, 2016, etc.) explores the criminal demimonde in a short but potent novel that's as elegant as Claude Rains and as sinister as Peter Lorre.An aspiring writer. A young woman with a mysterious past. An older man with nice clothes. The setup is classic Modiano, reminiscent of earlier works such as In the Cafe of Lost Youth. Originally published in French in 2012, five years after that predecessor volume, this novel turns on familiar elements. Jean, just beginning his career as a writer, carries a little notebook at all times, with jottings that occasionally intimate literature but more often serve as reminders of people he's met and dates he has to keep, most notably with Dannie, a waiflike young woman whose every breath carries hints of dark secrets and the memory of a particular "nasty incident" about whose nature Jean can only guess. Is Dannie just light-fingered or with a finger on the trigger? It doesn't help that the man called Aghamouri, who haunts hotels staffed by whispering Maghrebians and wears a beautiful camel coat, drops hints that give Jean the willies or that a police detective doesn't bother to hide his professional interest in Dannie and her associates. Why does Dannie have access to a country estate? Why doesn't Aghamouri ever have dinner with his wife? And, if he's 30 years old and has a wife, what's he doing hanging around college, apart from keeping an eye on Dannie, whom the world has nothing left to teach? The questions mount. It's good that American publishers are catching up to Modiano's recent works, having mined his output from the 1970s and beyond, but it's a touch curious that this late-period Modiano seems bound up in old formulas, like a more literary but no more cheerful Simenon.An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler.

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Starred review from May 15, 2016

In his latest, published in France in 2012, Nobel Prize winner Modiano does what he does best: in settings that seem to rise from the mists of the Seine, he explores the limits of memory and the slipperiness of both past and present. Following Algeria's war of independence, a young writer named Jean wanders through Paris, eventually falling in love with the mysterious Danny. He needs persistence because Danny is evasive, shifting residences, picking up her mail at general delivery, and clearly using a pseudonym. She's also linked to a bunch of shady characters who seem to have committed a singular crime, and Jean soon finds himself being interviewed by a detective. Years later, with the help of a notebook Jean kept, Jean tries to reconstruct this time in his life, with incomplete success. The crime, suggested by the 1965 kidnapping of a North African political activist, is referenced in just a few scenes, which is both galling and precisely the point; as Modiano always reveals, our understanding of circumstances can be tangential at best. VERDICT Classic Modiano sure to engage sophisticated readers, yet the noir sensibility and hint of crime could attract a larger audience. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016

Following Algeria's war of independence, a young writer named Jean wanders through Paris, falling in love with a mysterious woman. Her links to some shady characters lead to his being interviewed by a police detective. Years later, with the help of a notebook he kept, Jean tries to reconstruct this time in his life. Published in 2012; in the Nobel Prize winner's indelible style.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2016

In his latest, published in France in 2012, Nobel Prize winner Modiano does what he does best: in settings that seem to rise from the mists of the Seine, he explores the limits of memory and the slipperiness of both past and present. Following Algeria's war of independence, a young writer named Jean wanders through Paris, eventually falling in love with the mysterious Danny. He needs persistence because Danny is evasive, shifting residences, picking up her mail at general delivery, and clearly using a pseudonym. She's also linked to a bunch of shady characters who seem to have committed a singular crime, and Jean soon finds himself being interviewed by a detective. Years later, with the help of a notebook Jean kept, Jean tries to reconstruct this time in his life, with incomplete success. The crime, suggested by the 1965 kidnapping of a North African political activist, is referenced in just a few scenes, which is both galling and precisely the point; as Modiano always reveals, our understanding of circumstances can be tangential at best. VERDICT Classic Modiano sure to engage sophisticated readers, yet the noir sensibility and hint of crime could attract a larger audience. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/16.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.