Paris Nocturne
Patrick Modiano
This is
a haunting story about memory, the past and the “eternal return”
or the sense that you have already meet someone before in the course
of your life.
The
narrator of this story is a young man who, one night in Paris, has
been hit by a car. The car was driven by a woman and they are both
taken to the hospital. Upon his release from the hospital he spends
days or weeks looking for the woman driver, who he feels he has meet
somewhere before, in another accident when he was just a child. He
tries to piece the fragments of his memory together while looking for
answers to the accident. He seems to be looking for light at the end
of his darkness as he wanders through Paris, mainly at night. Will
the woman be the connection he is seeking or will she be the bridge
to his past or the key to his future?
The
atmosphere is heavy and dark as if one is in a haze or a dream. The
reader is never quite sure if the main character is having memory
difficulties because of the accident or whether he's been suffering
from this for some time. I'm in two minds about this story. I can't
decide if I really liked it but, it is one of those stories that
linger in the mind long after you've finished it. Maybe I'm still
waiting for the haze to lift so I can find the larger meaning I
missed.
Thanks
to Goodreads giveaway and Yale Press for allowing me to read this
book.
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