Liking this series more and more. Can get involved enough that I do not feel I am wasting time. Love the French language everywhere, forcing me to GooLiking this series more and more. Can get involved enough that I do not feel I am wasting time. Love the French language everywhere, forcing me to Google pronunciations and meanings. This is also a complicated story of past terrorism in Europe...one that almost lost me several times. France's relationship to the Basque freedom movement, and the pan-European communist movements are at the forefront. Brutal, secretive, post-individual movements that have no pity.
Bruno once again puts his township at the center of his concerns and enjoys the company of his animals, lovers, hunting and drinking partners. ...more
Who woulda thought Black Diamond was not about skiing but instead about truffles? This mystery veered into danger territory when the author decided toWho woulda thought Black Diamond was not about skiing but instead about truffles? This mystery veered into danger territory when the author decided to talk about several threads at once, clearly not at ease with the Asian portion.
Market stall owners of Asian descent are set upon by Asians of different nationalities and the immigration/fakes/drugs issues that crop up are all thrown in for flavor. The complicated nature of the relationships threaten to overcome the slow pace of Saint Denis but somehow Bruno manages to come out on top once again.
The similarly complicated relationship between Pamela and Bruno presents choices I wouldn't make the way they do, I don't thin change that might be necessary. Wrenching change is offset by pleasant additions to the character list, like Hector....more
I skipped around a little. This is Book #13 in the series, published in 2020 and it has so much current events featured that it seemed especially timeI skipped around a little. This is Book #13 in the series, published in 2020 and it has so much current events featured that it seemed especially timely. The main action takes place at Chateau Rock which is owned by an aging British rock star. The musician's son is in love with a wealthy Russian who comes to the chateau to visit with her bodyguard and a friend, who happens to have Ukrainian family history.
One of the parts I liked best was Bruno's 1) involvement with Isabel, who works for French and European intelligence, but also 2) Balzac's mating story, his first encounter with the female of his species. Really quite involving, to one who's never been involved in such doings.
Very fast paced starting midway, but the rest is as wonderful and slow as one would hope a French village market would be... ...more
This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going on much too long. Some of the same stuff we read about today with horror is in this book.
Delisle is a wonderful cartoonist who includes enough detail to make us feel as though we have a good portrait of a place. Trash and smells come through, gorgeous shiny domes of gold are clearly depicted. But Delisle has no axe to grind so he is almost the perfect cipher. He just draws what he sees and what he sees is breathtaking.
His wife is a doctor with Médicins San Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders and they work in conflict areas. Therefore, she works in Gaza so one may assume Delisle will have the viewpoint of "the oppressed." He never got to Gaza because of restrictions on his movement, so he concentrates his energies on Jerusalem. There is plenty to see there.
I highly recommend this book for insights gleaned while viewing a place from someone else's eyes. ...more
Vargas doesn’t spare us the grisly details of outrageous crimes committed against defenseless girls and women, but never have I ever wanted to be in aVargas doesn’t spare us the grisly details of outrageous crimes committed against defenseless girls and women, but never have I ever wanted to be in a mystery novel before. The characterizations of police officers and villagers are so full of personality, intelligence, and humor that one cannot help but wish these folks were by one’s side—or at least televised.
According to Wikipedia, four of the Vargas mystery series have been serialized for television. I saw one, once, years ago. It was painful, considering the renown of French cinema and the intrigue of the novels. it is definitely time for a new rendition.
Any new film series of the novels must be filmed in France and in French because the charm of the series is the utter French-ness of the interactions, the local dishes like the cabbage soup with onions and ham the officers eat nearly every night of the investigation, and endless bottles of Madiran.
Vargas has given us a convoluted mystery so dense with criminality that we scarcely know which way to turn. Just today I was listening to a podcast discussing the many thousands of rape kits in American cities which were never run for DNA: when the kits were finally examined, the entire body of knowledge around rape and serial rape has been turned on its head. It turns out that there were many, many more rapists than one ever thought possible, and one out of every five rapes is caused by a serial rapist.
There has been, as can be seen in the history revealed in this novel and in the untested rape kits languishing on shelves in police stations all over America, a dismissive attitude towards crimes against women. In this mystery, some truly horrifying crimes are described (thankfully in a matter-of-fact, non-inflammatory way) and some male attitudes are examined for bias. At one point Chief Inspector Adamsberg realizes describing his favorite female lieutenant as worth “ten men” would be better changed to “one woman.” Those of us who have worked with colleagues of both sexes are pleased Vargas made a point of chastising Adamsberg for old attitudes.
Vargas is known for the depth of her knowledge about medieval subjects and archeology and gradually she incorporates some of her encyclopedic knowledge in this more modern mystery. There is an archeological dig, and we learn how to find the site and what it takes to manage it. There is a medieval tie-in, but the shocking part is that it sounds medieval when in fact some of the events happened within recent history.
Chief Inspector Jean Baptiste Adamsberg always puts me in mind of Simenon’s Jules Maigret, though the two police chiefs are quite different in many ways. One difference is that Maigret, unless my memory is faulty, wasn't necessarily a masterful team leader. Adamsberg is far from alone. We are intimately familiar with his entire team and grow to rely on them to keep their chief operating in maximum intuition. Adamsberg's “tiny bubbles of gas in [his] brain” jiggle when he walks, stimulating thought. Not so far, then, from Poirot’s “little grey cells.”
This novel, originally published in May of 2017 by Flammarion of France, has been translated by Siân Reynolds, winner of many awards, including a coveted Dagger from Crime Writers’ Association. Reynolds is a professor emerita of French at the University of Stirling, Scotland. In her words,
”… Fred’s books are quirky and often fantastical, sometimes with historical elements, and much appreciated in France. They are about French characters usually in a recognizably French environment, and will necessarily seem a bit foreign to anglophone readers, so the aim is to make them enjoyable on their own terms – but in English.”
This Reynolds does in spades. The novels are a remarkable glimpse of French culture and altogether are a marvelous series. Highly recommended....more
This mystery novel by prize-winning novelist Tanguy Viel is translated from the French but suffused with French melancholy and spirit. The dark, foggyThis mystery novel by prize-winning novelist Tanguy Viel is translated from the French but suffused with French melancholy and spirit. The dark, foggy atmosphere of the northern French coast comes through strongly in the conversation between two men: one asking questions, the other explaining the death of a man everyone thought they knew. Several times we are turned about in our perceptions of what happened.
The whole book would make an excellent play, if the backdrop behind the men in conversation was a large window opening onto the view of the old château on its five acres of maintained lawn sloping down to the sea. The down-on-its-luck coastal town had riches in that view.
We smell the salt air and consider wealth. What is wealth and how do we know when we have it? How does it makes us feel and how much wealth is enough? Everyone in the town worked at a metal fabricators for naval vessels but the factory was closing and severance payments, while large, had to last a lifetime for some of the middle-aged.
Along comes a property developer who wants to build a glittering resort where the château stands. It sounds like a good idea in a town losing its primary industry. Martial Kermeur lives in the château's grounds-man’s cottage for free, though he is responsible for keeping the five acres surrounding the château cut and trimmed. His son, only ten, lives with him after the divorce.
Kermeur’s tale is told after several years; his son is now seventeen. The story is not complicated, “just a run-of-the-mill swindle.” The villain in the piece is in sight the entire time. A classic tale of right and wrong, good and evil, we must consider how far the penal code extends to protecting citizens from wrongdoing.
We don’t often get the opportunity to read current French novels that have captured that nation’s imagination—a nation which supplied some of the greatest philosophers the world has yet known. The tale retains the taste of France. Finishing up at less than one-hundred-and-fifty pages, this novelette makes us look deep inside for how we view right and wrong,...more
Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 201Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 2015, and seems to have taken into consideration most of the complaints about earlier cultural tourism. It looks like a fun book--teachers may find themselves skimming but getting caught in the interesting detail and in imagining how they would present the material in class. It is a colorful round-the-world tour of certain countries and parts of the world, e.g., A for Australia...
To my eye, it looked appropriate for 10-year-olds, but I have seen it listed for third-sixth graders, in the U.S., that would be 8-11. That seems about right.
It has a current feel. Women are shown, not all working in traditional jobs, and there is a sort of poem at the start of each new letter that can be put to a beat, if one wanted. Could be useful for class projects....more
Percival Everett blows the doors off with this beautifully constructed novel that holds secrets and mysteries in each of its three stories centered abPercival Everett blows the doors off with this beautifully constructed novel that holds secrets and mysteries in each of its three stories centered about Kevin, a fifty-something abstract painter living in New England with his wife and two children. I do wonder about Everett, who so gradually has become one of America’s most reliably exciting and unique novelists that his anonymity lasted long enough for him to enjoy some walking-around time without celebrity recognition. That’s probably well over now, especially if this novel gets the attention it deserves.
The work is studded with recognizable truths in the way of great literature but the writing is plain enough that we spot these easily, following his trail eagerly. Describing the way his children looked at him when he was drinking regularly and too much:
“No, I never flew into rages or stumbled late and noisily into dance recitals or yelled a little too loud and made inappropriate comments at soccer games, but I became acutely aware that I wore a sickly-sweet late evening cologne and I noticed how my children looked at my eyes, holding them for too long and looking away too quickly.”
There is a paragraph less than fifty pages in which describes what happens in Paris when Kevin is visiting a museum on a day his wife is traveling and happens upon a young woman, a watercolorist, who recognizes him and invites him somewhere they can talk comfortably.
“Very close of course was Victoire’s flat. She was, after all, a watercolorist and her apartment was full of them. Thankfully they were not portraits of cows, but there was a preponderance of empty parks and stark river scenes. There was a large window that overlooked a garden. In the middle of the garden was a broken birdbath and I felt a little guilty when I realized I was paying more attention to it than to the many works of art. I turned my attention to her work and found them well done, but ordinary.”
This paragraph with all its conflicted feelings describes a true thing; I know this because it happened to me. I can’t remember now if I was the young woman or the older man. Perhaps I was the younger woman with the eyes of an older man.
Everett does this to us regularly: holds up our experience, or maybe his own, for us to acknowledge. He is always surprising and exact yet comfortable and intimate with us. Sometimes his sentences remind me of the clipped noir of Raymond Chandler or the deeply funny yet seriocomic social commentary of Joe Lansdale. But Everett is unique. He has released an enormously assured work of fiction that deserves much more attention than it has garnered so far.
The novel's three strands, each thread on a different continent, are widely spaced in time yet carefully braided into one narrative so that no one strand seems dominant nor gets lost as the other stories unfold. The interleaving is so well done it is a model for writers. The only overlap in all the stories is the main character, Kevin Pace; married, living in Rhode Island, two children, a painter.
Blue, the color blue, cerulean, cobalt, “the color of trust, loyalty,” ultramarine, blue leaning to green, Guillet green, emerald green. Kevin saw one painting done by the young French watercolorist which was outside her usual style, all done in blues and green running into blue, with a splash of blood red in one corner; it made him cry. Blue was a color he could not control, and it reminded him of something, a secret.
This novel is about secrets, and upheaval, and finding a safe place, and the how paint can reveal truths we cannot speak. Everett is a painter besides being an author, and in 2010 he collaborated with the novelist Chris Abani to produce a journal of Abani’s poetry and Everett’s paintings.
Almost every novel by Everett is different than the one preceding it, making it seem as though he were reveling in the breadth of the form, trying out methods, working a style. One has the sense of an oeuvre not unlike a fiction chapbook which showcases many forms of popular fiction but which is infused with a self-conscious humor, even parody, always within the realm of literature. It is American literature at core, worthy of study for the pieces Everett chooses to highlight. That standing outside the form is almost missing in this novel, but Everett is sly.
This novel comes after thirty or more earlier works, and seems to bring all that earlier writing to glorious fruition. It’s a beautiful novel, full of energy, movement, truth, and color. So much blue....more
This play sounds like the voices of educated British schoolgirls in the beginning; I was a little surprised to find that Jean Anouilh was a French natThis play sounds like the voices of educated British schoolgirls in the beginning; I was a little surprised to find that Jean Anouilh was a French national. I suppose the difference between British and French is not so great, but somehow I always thought the cadences were different, to say nothing of the cadences of girls from Greece two thousand years ago. But this is written in English and it is ravishingly comprehensible and utterly contemporary.
What a joy is this play as written by Anouilh. The canny cunning of a young girl who makes an earth-shattering decision and refuses to be swayed is here in its entirety. Of course she is right, Antigone, taking the moral course, but none is as fierce in her determination, and none so brave. Antigone deflects and protects The Nurse and Ismene, and tries to do the same for poor, dead Polynices.
Did you notice Ismene describes Antigone as having a different kind of beauty: “…it’s always you that the little boys turn to look back at when they pass us in the street. And when you go by, the little girls stop talking, They stare and stare at you, until we’ve turned a corner.” This description captures that difference also between Lila and Lena in Elena Ferrante’s novel of Neapolitan Italy. Antigone is fatalistic, as is Lila.
The great wisdom Anouilh brings to this work is that melodrama works because one is never sure of the outcome, and the strength of the argument passes from one character to another, depending on circumstance. With tragedy on the other hand, the end is preordained, and therefore is calming. There is nothing to be done except play out the roles.
I especially liked what Anouilh did with the story of Eteocles and Polynices. I have no idea is this is part of the myth or something Anouilh added. I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t learned the myth yet, but this added to my sense of this whole thing as soap opera par excellence. Just as one thinks one has the characters pegged, up comes a new wrinkle that makes them out to be opportunists or really thoughtful and self-sacrificing beneath the visible outlines of their actions.
Gorgeous piece of work. Won’t finish the rest of the plays right now, I’m afraid. Bad timing....more
With this new book released in the U.S. in the spring of this year, French Canadian graphic artist and animator Guy Delisle takes a departure from hisWith this new book released in the U.S. in the spring of this year, French Canadian graphic artist and animator Guy Delisle takes a departure from his more usual graphic novels about his life as the spouse of a Médecins Sans Frontières physician to tell the story of a real innocent abroad, Christophe André, on his first assignment for MSF in Ingushetia, in the North Caucasus in 1997.
Christophe was taken hostage, driven across the border into Chechnya, and outside of Grozny he was held for ransom for three months. He had been in his post for three months when they came for him. He spent the bulk of his captivity chained to a radiator in a small room with a mattress stuffed with straw. He was fed watery soup and allowed bathroom breaks, but otherwise had no opportunity to speak, see the sky, move freely.
Ransom negotiations were slow: when he escaped, finally, the translator assigned to his office in Ingushetia told him other foreigners had been kidnapped in the time he was being held. The 400+ pages of this book are not a struggle; readers spend the time thinking about what they might do in similar circumstances, and interrogate themselves about the scene and their own strengths. André himself passed the more terrible stretches by recalling in great detail the military commanders and engagements he'd studied, including Russian, French, and American battles.
The escape at the end is harrowing, and stomach-dropping. André simply did not know whom to trust. Eventually he made it back to his home in Paris, and six months after that went back to MSF and asked for a new assignment. He worked twenty years for MSF after that experience.
Coming out at this time of year, Pamela Paul’s memoir is reminiscent of a commencement speech, albeit book-length and one just as interesting for the Coming out at this time of year, Pamela Paul’s memoir is reminiscent of a commencement speech, albeit book-length and one just as interesting for the parents as for the graduates. It is a blast to listen to an obsessive reader share her thoughts on books, her travels and travails. Bob is her lifelong companion and record, her Book of Books, the place she can note what she has read. It gives date of completion, and, because Paul tried to read books about the countries or cities she visits or lives, we deduce a sense of location. It is her book of memories then, a record of where she has been.
Paul was the single daughter born into a family of seven sons. Despite the expected in-house torture and rough-housing, her psyche remained remarkably intact, though her parent’s divorce may have had more effect than discussed here. She did emerge as a reader, an introvert, and from a young age wanted to write. In this book she has boldly decided to write about what she’s read in the context of her life, and astonishingly, it is interesting. We enjoy retracing her faltering steps as a burgeoning adult, in which she recalls with uncommon accuracy the embarrassed and confused feelings of a teen.
France plays a large role in Paul’s life. Although her American Field Service (AFS) experience in a small town in suburban France was not as she imagined, it set the table for her next visit and the one after that. Eventually she found a family in France that became a second home, a family that subsequently attended her weddings and met her children. This kind of close long-term relationship defines Paul, I think. We all have trajectories, but not all of us cultivate the path as we go so that it becomes personal, the impact felt on both sides.
Paul’s decision after college to go directly to Thailand without the usual scramble for underpaid work at home was prescient but daring. She’d not get another chance to see that part of the world with any depth, though the China portion of the trip gave me the screaming heebies. It sounded perfectly horrendous, completely uncomfortable, filled with sickness and incomprehension. The China trip was her father’s idea, and it never became hers. The unmitigated disaster of that trip reminds us that we have to own our journey, start to finish, for us to manage it with any kind of finesse.
There was a marriage that lasted a year. The utter heartbreak Paul experienced does not lacerate us: from the moment she begins to speak of her first husband we are suspicious. She is much too happy much too soon. Love is one thing. Blindness is another. In my mind I modify Thoreau to read: beware all enterprises that require giving up a large, rent-controlled flat in New York City...
"…the minute a subject veered from the fictional world, the private world, the secluded, just-us-on-top-of-the-mountain world, into the greater, grittier territory below, the nonfictional world, my husband and I had serious differences…Even when we each happily read those same books about the perfidy of man, we read them in opposite ways…this kind of book contested my essentially optimistic view of the world rather than overturned it…whereas for him, the world really was that bleak, and the books proved it."
Here you have, folks, a political difference so profound it can break nations in two. Ayn Rand’s work became Paul’s personal standard for judging viewpoints. Paul admits--she who practically worships books--that she threw one of Ayn Rand’s books in the trash after reading it, so that no one else would be polluted by its ideas. I laughed. I did the same thing, though I contemplated burning it before I did. In my tiny garage-turned-apartment in New Mexico, I wrestled with Rand’s horrifying vision of a society of go-getters and decided that to burn her book would invest it with too much significance.
I loved reading about Paul’s poor dating experiences after that. She was inoculated against irrational exuberance after her divorce, but she still wanted intimacy. She manages to share with us chortle-inducing instances of “okay, I’ve had enough of that” with some of the men she met later. My favorite might be the time a boyfriend convinces her that he’d been to the Grand Canyon before and so can show her “the best way to see it.” Har-dee-har-har. This memoir is a great example of smart and funny, gifting us many moments of remembering our own worst histories and reinforcing for younger women coming along that our judgment may be the only thing separating us from a much worse time of it.
Pamela Paul is now books editor of The New York Times and no longer has to struggle to find the coin to buy a new book. She is the best kind of editor for all of us because she is has read widely and acknowledges the draw of genre fiction while communicating her admiration for the range of new nonfiction that helps us cope with our history and our future. She is also an interested and informed consumer of Children’s lit and Young Adult titles, which aids me immeasurably since these are not my specialty and therefore necessitate me seeking assistance from a trusted source.
Access to all there is out there comes with its own set of stresses, but Paul has extended her reach by asking some of the best writers in the country to read and review titles in the NYT Book Review, and to talk about their selections on the Book Review Podcast, available each week from iTunes as an automatic download. Her guests and her own considered opinions help to narrow the field for us.
This is a great vacation read, not at all strenuous, yet it is involving. Imagine the unlikeliness of the concept: an introverted reader and editor writes a book about her life…reading…and it is interesting! Totes amazeballs. It occurs to me that Goodreads is one big Bob. I’m so glad Paul put the effort in to share with us: big mistakes don’t have to be the end of the world. It depends what happens after that. See what I mean about commencement?...more
Volume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six yeaVolume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six years old. He is ready to go to school for the first time, and is terrified. With good reason, it turns out.
Sattouf positively outdoes himself drawing scenes from the classroom. The headscarf-wearing teacher has a skirt so short and legs so large that our eyes widen in fear. Riad takes a frame to zero in on the impossible narrowness of her high heels, her calves looming dense and heavy above, like a boulder snagged over a walkway. She looks dangerous. That is to say nothing of the smile she holds a second before she strikes the boys on the palms with a wooden rod. Nothing so thin as a ruler, her tool is a rod that looks very solid and hard in her hand.
"Ha, ha, [Riad’s father chortles that evening] you’re funny. You’re just like me at your age. Scared of everything…Don’t worry, nothing will happen."
More false words were never spoken. Lots happens, and much of it is life-threatening. But perhaps most importantly we see the utter cruelty with which people treat one another. If there was ever a time to be grateful for political correctness in our daily interactions, after reading this you will breathe a sigh of relief for those tedious niceties. You will remember the menace of schoolyard bullies, and realize Arab society, in Syria at least, is taught this is normal human behavior: to be admired if you win, killed if you do not.
Sattouf takes his time with this installment of the story of young Riad. We spend a couple of days sampling the coursework in first grade: patriotic songs, basic characters for writing, reading skills without comprehension, and inventive slurs and punishments. We meet the neighbors: a police-chief-cousin whose stash of gold jewelry could finance a bank, and whose home is a huge unfinished concrete pile cratered with moisture-seeping cracks. We go on a day trip to Palmyra with a general while Riad’s father spends his time trying to wrangle the general into “putting in a word” for his advancement at the university where he works. Palmyra is littered with ancient-looking pottery shards which Riad’s father disdains.
"In the third century after Jesus Christ [Riad’s father says dully, lighting a cigarette] Zenobia turned the nomad’s city of Palmyra into an influential artistic center."
Riad returns to France and enjoys it at the same time he begins to realize he is changing…has changed. He is a desert child now, confused with the plenty that surrounds him in France. It is a poignant section we all recognize for its dislocation. He does not read or speak French particularly well. The French language is difficult, and complicated. Where does Riad fit in? Where does he belong? Where will he be accepted?
The scenes of RIad with the men in his community when he returns to Homs are memorable. Very little is said; the drawings do the work here. I did not understand all that was implied, but someone will. Perhaps the punchline will be revealed in another installation of the life of Riad in Syria. Riad’s father is becoming more and more unbearable as a husband, as a father, as a man. He is hopelessly out of his league wherever he is, and always aspirational, never in control. His wife is losing patience, and he himself is recognizing a few hard truths that have him sitting by himself in some frames, smoking and silent.
Sattouf leaves us feeling unsettled and unsure. Do we want Riad in this place with these people? I think his mother is feeling similarly unsure. The father…one gets the sense that however much the father thinks he is the man, there is precious little he does control.
This installment just cements my sense that this kind of graphic novel may be the easiest, most immediate, most fun way to learn about a culture. When it is done well, a boatload of information can be transmitted in a couple of frames. Sattouf appears to be completely frank about life in Homs as he sees it, and it is remarkable for its insights as well as its humor.
I love this series and will insist upon reading everything about Riad growing up. The Tintin series was the first set of books Riad had access to, the series being only one of two books his academic father had in his personal library. The other book was the Quran. Will look to see if I can see the influences from Tintin in Sattouf’s marvelous story of growing up Arab before his third book hits the stands.
The terrific translation of this work is done by Sam Taylor, and the U.S. publisher is Metropolitan Books, a division of Henry Holt. ...more
How impoverished would the world be without the French? Olivier Magny, whose qualification to expound upon the French way of life is without qualificaHow impoverished would the world be without the French? Olivier Magny, whose qualification to expound upon the French way of life is without qualification (he was born in France, grew up in France, and runs a business in France), pokes some fun (love of Nutella, love of rap music, inability to dance) but mixes in surprisingly astute social and political commentary on the nature and attitudes of the French for those of us who do not travel there frequently. Arising from the success of Magny’s blog and an earlier book called Stuff Parisians Like, this book carries his cultural introductions further and deeper.
Magny shares some of what he considers the most beautiful places in France, pointing out the wide range of regions and styles: “Whether you’re drawn to beautiful beaches, mountains, hills, plains, lakes, river, cold water or warm water, dry weather or wet weather, arid vegetation or lush forests, chances are France has it somewhere.” Which makes us especially curious when he tells us that Anglo-Saxons, comprising Great Britain and America, and often New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, are lumped into one category of human that the French have no need, nor any desire, to examine in detail. Les Anglo-Saxons are to blame for most of the drinking and warmongering in the world, but also have admirable business practices, good universities, and research. By analogy, perhaps we shouldn’t be lumping “the French” in anything like a monolithic category.
"Since the inception of Vatican II, France went from being…the first child of the Catholic Church to being one of the least religious countries on earth. Among the general public, the Church went from being viewed as a profoundly respected and heeded institution to being an inaudible and questionable organization…the tremendous surge of Islam is a response to the collapse of the Catholic Church…While official reports continue to claim that Catholicism is still the number one religion in France—which happens to be impossible to prove since the French state is prohibited from keeping such statistics—there is no doubt that if it is still the case (which is unlikely), it won’t be for long."
In another section, Magny tries to explain the rise of the far-right nationalist party in France. Many Western countries are experiencing the same phenomenon, and the phrases Magny uses to describe “the switch over to the extreme right” has many parallels in the U.S. We are not alone, then, in our population's severe disaffection with politicians in government, and the media’s horrorstricken and ineffectual analyses. Magny's discussion deepens our understanding of how flattening the wealth pyramid has worked out in France.
This book is meaty, considering the essays max out at three or four pages for each topic, and is unfailingly interesting. After a few more serious topics including immigration, police, and three(!) sections on taxes, Magny returns to a lighter note, discussing the haircuts of older women, pessimism, divorce, TV debates, how speaking English is now cool, and the comment thread in online communication. Absolutely surprising was the low rate (to me) of daily wine consumption in France and the fact that younger French are being influenced by America’s fascination with wine to drink it in greater amounts. And the omnipresence of yogurt in every refrigerator.
Most of us remember a hunger for French panache and elegance in design and style, but Magny tells us that has changed in France these days. “Aiming high has become suspicious,” and therefore folks are looking more for value and convenience. It is an absolute change in focus, quality, and lifestyle that changes the meaning of France for many of us. “France is the worst country to make money in, but is the best one to spend it in.” This statement opens the door to yet another discussion of taxes and how “very few people are sitting on a very large stack of cash. Savings and generational wealth are almost unheard-of in France.”
This extraordinary collection of essays is completely engrossing to someone tangentially acquainted with France and its systems. Magny must have some critics. The more we know the more we'd be able to critique this work. Can all France's problems be laid at the feet of a leftist mentality in education and government? The best thing this book does is make us look, really look at France with a questioning eye. We aren't tourists anymore.
Magny takes a stab at examining the real roots of cultural change. Many essays include suggestions for further online research into French taxes, governance, music, film, and TV celebrities, suggestions given with the equivalent of a Gallic shrug: “If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourselves and make up your own mind.” Thought-provoking and much deeper in tone than I was expecting from a book of this type, the book should spur some discussion and counter theories by others who have some experience living and working in France.
Intriguing, easy to read, and worth seeking out. Makes great conversation starters if one is going to France....more
During the election pre-season in America, I was as surprised and intrigued at the support for Donald Trump as the rest of the thinking universe (not During the election pre-season in America, I was as surprised and intrigued at the support for Donald Trump as the rest of the thinking universe (not the pundits, of course). As I laughed at his unscripted policy-free speeches and intentionally note-worthy off-the-cuff remarks, I remember thinking I would love to see the effect of his ‘shock and awe’ campaign on someone like Putin. I thought Trump would be too unpredictable and outspoken for Putin. I am ready to take that back. In a weird kind of way, both men, neither political operatives at the start of their careers, are a similar kind of not-liberal, not-conservative, whatever-works nationalist kind of politician. And both have created a cult of personality to facilitate a kind of one-man rule.
Myers allowed me to catch this glimpse of Putin at his start in government as an ordinary man unused to and previously uninterested in political power. When he began in the Sobchak Leningrad government, he may or may not have been involved in skimming from contracts he arranged with the newly burgeoning private sector after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He certainly was in a position to do so, and many of the people he awarded contracts did so: he formed firm friendships and nurtured loyal apparatchiks in Leningrad that reappear throughout his political career. But it is also true that Russia in the early 1990’s was a wild place with many crime lords jockeying for power. Putin’s family was targeted at least once. Putin did not at that time appear to have the trappings of new wealth, though we learned only recently of monies in his name from the Panama Papers. It is possible that his wealth accumulated from later dealings.
It has always been difficult to understand why Putin was reputed to enjoy such wide public support in Russia, but I realize now that our media reporting emphasized bad judgment and outcomes while Russian media outlets emphasized good intent and nationalism. Myers gives a far more nuanced picture of Putin growing into his role as president—prime minister—president again in this book. If Putin didn’t begin as a friend to oligarchs, he gradually relaxed into the role. He began as a man with he stated goal of “making Russia great again.” He could see that some people were gaming the system by purchasing national reserves of commodities improperly priced and selling them at more realistically priced international values. This was not illegal at the time, just morally suspect. Rather than trying to fix the system of laws that allowed this rape of mineral and energy resources to continue, Putin selectively applied legal and taxation rules on the books to hamper, entangle, or otherwise inhibit the activities of people who did not work closely with him.
Myers charts the hardening of Putin’s character, from his shock and dismay upon learning that Yeltsin had chosen him as a political successor to his chagrin upon learning that his chosen successor, Medvedev, had both an opinion and a weakness that didn’t partner Putin well. And what was very clear in Myers’ telling was the perception of U.S. foreign policy decisions by Russians and Putin. By the time Edward Snowden comes on the scene late in the book, we laugh at Putin’s pleasure in pointing out political dissidence and jail is not just a Russian thing.
”Ask yourself, do you need to put such people in jail, or not?”
Putin was more confident during his second presidency and yet the moment he assumed power the second time his poll ratings began to fall. It was the moment citizens realized that there was really no conversation, no political discussion going on. It only takes twenty years for a political climate to change irrevocably: ask Hillary Clinton. In twenty years, young people with no historical memory bring a new clarity to what is happening right now, with no regard to what came before. Pussy Riot called out Putin; Sanders’ supporters are calling out Clinton.
Putin operated, and operates now, by relying on a close and loyal group of political “friends” from his time in the FSB and his time working for Sobchak in Leningrad. Loyalty is so prized that it would not surprise me to learn that some of the political murders committed during Putin’s reign were not “ordered” by himself. It seems entirely possible to me that elements in a large bureaucracy might prove their loyalty by eliminating static that was damaging to the leader. The problem with a large bureaucracy is that it can take on a character of its own and is not easy to change.
A really strange event occurred early in Putin’s first presidency: the bombing of the apartment buildings in Moscow and the sacks of FSB-sourced explosives found in the apartment building in Ryazan. These incidents have never been satisfactorily explained, and could be an example of a bureaucracy grinding out [imperfect] solutions to perceived problems that impact Putin & Co. In a case like that, or in the case of sheer incompetence (also an enduring feature of large bureaucracy), it is not hard to see Putin keeping mum out of loyalty to those he is protecting. Some actions, like poisoning political opponents or shooting reporters in the the stairwells of their buildings, are simply too crude, destructive, and beneath the dignity of someone in power to imagine they are a “command.” Bill Browder’s account of his time making money hand-over-fist in the 1990’s in Russia, Red Notice, mentioned that powerful figures known to Putin wanted the real estate on which those apartment buildings were built and were meeting resistance. Whatever the truth of the matter, this did not have to originate in the Kremlin to be horrifying in its motivation. It does appear, however, that it was condoned by the Kremlin since a good explanation was never uncovered.
One of the things that motivates Putin is the expanding power of NATO in Europe. Putin still thinks in terms of great powers and feels he is being hemmed in by Western Europe nibbling away at his satellite countries. It is hard not to sympathize. Certainly that is happening, and will continue to happen in a Clinton presidency, further exacerbating Putin’s bellicosity, and sense of infringement and inferiority.
Russia is a huge country. “Too big, really” says Ian Frazier in his big book Travels in Siberia. Putin says its size and different cultures is the reason there cannot be a representative democracy like that in America. Since even America doesn’t seem to the have the process working very well at the moment, it is difficult to pretend to know what difficulties arise when trying to restore the kind of power that was shattered by the overthrow of the tsar in twentieth century Russia. The only thing I would concede is that ruling Russia must be a very difficult job, particularly when one is looking backward. One must look ahead, not backward, when one is leading, it seems to me.
I feel like I have gotten a terrific education reading this book and am much better able to parse news coming out of Russia, Europe, and the Middle East today. I can now put Putin into the context vis-a-vis U.S. diplomatic relations. Clinton must be the last person Putin would want to see be elected president in the United States, and in some ways Trump is as unpredictable as Putin has claimed he has tried to be. But I am not recommending a vote for Trump. I think a better choice might be neither of these two. ...more
Modiano has a melancholic bent whose sentences vibrate (“like a spider’s web”) with a kind of menace. We are never really sure who deserves the most sModiano has a melancholic bent whose sentences vibrate (“like a spider’s web”) with a kind of menace. We are never really sure who deserves the most scrutiny amongst his characters, but everyone in this novel seems to be hiding some dark past or grim present. Even the dog, a Great Dane, was “congenitally afflicted with sadness and the ennui of life.” In Modiano's lavish description of the locale, a fashionable small French resort across a lake from Switzerland, even the trees are a mystery:
"The vegetation here is thoroughly mixed, it’s hard to tell if you’re in the Alps, on the shores of the Mediterranean, or somewhere in the tropics. Umbrella pines. Mimosas. Fir trees. Palms. If you take the boulevard up the hillside, you discover the panorama: the entire lake, the Aravis mountains, and across the water, the elusive country known as Switzerland."
Why “elusive”? We never learn why. “I didn’t yet know that Switzerland doesn’t exist.” Perhaps it is the notion of safety that doesn’t exist. A nineteen-year-old is not expected to know that, not then, not now. Modiano liberally salts his work with phrases that fill us with an unnameable dread. Count Victor is no more Count than you or I, but somehow we’d rather believe that than whatever it is he is running from. He is the son of Russian Jews, and the Second World War is over at least fifteen years. He is wealthy beyond imagining, but he has fear: he’s “scared to death” he tells us early on as he recounts the time he met Yvonne and Meinthe.
”When I think of her today, that’s the image that comes back to me most often. Her smile and her red hair. The black-and-white dog beside her. The beige Dodge. And Meinthe, barely visible behind the windshield. And the switched-on headlights. And the rays of the sun.”
Modiano writes like a painter paints. He weaves sound and scent along with color and emotion, light and dark.
”We returned through a part of the garden I wasn’t familiar with. The gravel paths were rectilinear, the lawns symmetrical and laid out in picturesque English style. Around each of them were flamboyant beds of begonias or geraniums. And here as well, there was the soft, reassuring whisper of the sprinklers. I thought about the Tuileries of my childhood. Meinthe proposed that we have a drink…
In the end, the three of them, The Count, Yvonne, and Meinthe make quite a hit in that town at that time. Photographs show them glamorous and solemn, walking arm-in-arm beside the dog, Meinthe taking up the rear. Meinthe and Yvonne win the coveted Houligant Cup for that year and are sought-after companions for their edgy stylishness. Gradually Meinthe and Yvonne share pieces of their shadowy background with Victor, and the glamour, he realizes, is all rhinestones and rust.
“The rooms in 'palaces' fool you at first, but pretty soon their dreary walls and furniture begin to exude the same sadness as the accommodations in shady hotels. Insipid luxury; sickly sweet smell in the corridors, which I can’t identify but must be the very odor of anxiety, of instability, of exile, of phoniness.”
When “France suddenly seemed to [Victor] too narrow a territory,” he proposed they ditch the local act and take to the road, somewhere where they could show their true capabilities…America.
Later, when it is all over, we think that perhaps Victor’s fear stems from his youth, his aloneness, his uncertainty. He grew up that summer by the lake, and saw most of what there was to see. Later, when he ambles under the arcades on the Rue de Castiglione reading a newspaper, his education comes full circle, and the mystery begins again.
Promotional copy for Villa Triste, due out today in a new translation by John Cullen and published by Other Press, calls it Modiano’s most accessible novel. It may well be, but all Modiano’s great themes are present. This fine translation does justice to the underlying greatness of the work. A fine piece of literature that can keep you mulling events over in your head for a long time to come....more
Louis Malle and Patrick Modiano collaborated on a screenplay about the lives of a few individuals in 1944 during the German occupation in France. WhatLouis Malle and Patrick Modiano collaborated on a screenplay about the lives of a few individuals in 1944 during the German occupation in France. What is so remarkable about this small book is how so few words or body movements depict the devastating complexity of lives torn by war.
The screenplay opens with a seventeen-year-old boy, Lucien, diligently and thoroughly doing menial labor cleaning in a charitable nursing home. Our judgment of the boy changes much in the process of the play but this impression will be one we will be reluctant to divest.
Lucien comes from a small town in southeastern France that is a hotbed of resistance against the occupation. One day, standing on a limestone plateau with a flock of sheep, Lucien sees the wider world stretch out below him. He is just at the age when he realizes he can turn his bicycle in a different direction from the town where he works to seek out a different experience.
The world is full of danger, and one must be constantly vigilant not to fall into a trap, even though ultimately we cannot escape. The ease with which Lucien kills a small bird with his slingshot and leaves it lying in the courtyard is how, at the end, we view this work by Malle and Modiano. Filled with banality, tragedy, and senseless death, we recognize the underlying truth of war and the human condition.
This classic work of literature packs so much humanity into a glance, a phrase, a movement of the arm that it becomes the essential reading experience. It is only 100 pages, short enough to be read in an afternoon or evening, and yet its effects last forever. This is the way to describe people in extremis. It happened just like this.
Re-published by Other Press and due out this week, this is a book you must read to get a glimpse of how great literature manifests....more
Two film producers and critics, Molly and Michèle, have more in common than their professions. They are friends, deep-bonded in a way that comes rarelTwo film producers and critics, Molly and Michèle, have more in common than their professions. They are friends, deep-bonded in a way that comes rarely in a lifetime. Michèle writes that Molly is just another iteration of herself, one who had made different choices but was essentially the same. Each woman could see how their life might have turned out had they made the choices of the other, one with children and one without. That one was French and one American made no difference, at least to them.
This gorgeously-written, -conceived, and -translated novel leaves us pondering our responsibility to the world, to ourselves, and to each other. The truths it contains are recognizable dilemmas any of us might face: we can imagine having to make these choices.
Halberstadt defines the friendship between the two women distinctly. The two meet several times a year on different continents, attending festivals where they watch the current crop of films, compile their critiques, and plan their free time together. Laughter and shared intimacies leave each feeling unrestrained and free to be themselves, reflected and treasured by the other. When the sudden nagging migraines of forty-year-old Molly turn out to be a brain aneurysm, Michèle blames herself.
In the explanation to her small children about why she cries, Michèle describes Molly’s coma as the deep sleep of a princess. “Waiting for Prince Charming to come and give her a kiss!” the children crow, closer to the truth than they know. When Molly finally wakes after three months, she is partially paralyzed, and her persistent short-term memory loss leaves her feeling angry, cheated of life. While she seems to retain some of her personality, her drive and verve is gone. Molly’s reaction to her condition is more a tragedy than the actual fact of her disability. She loses her defenses.
What is so involving about this novel is the immediate form, written, in the beginning, as a letter from Michèle to Molly as Molly lay unmoving, unhearing. Michèle counts the ways she loves her friend: her sappy romanticism, her trick of whistling like a boy with two fingers, her frozen-food gourmandism. How she misses her. Michèle’s own life with her husband and her children has stresses and strains that she longs to share, to get relief and perspective. But as Molly languishes, Michèle feels there is no way to tell her friend that her husband has begun an affair--wearing aftershave, getting haircuts and new clothes, carrying his phone like a talisman—and that her children now turn to the nanny for comfort. Things are slipping away and Michèle appears to be losing almost as much as Molly: her best friend, her husband, and her children.
There almost seems something unfinished in this novel, but I believe whatever it is that is missing is what we are meant to supply. Both women react similarly to crises in their lives at first, true to the nature of the shared core they recognize and celebrate in friendship: they do nothing. Molly refuses to take up the challenge of carrying on her profession, or any profession, by carrying her disability there.
”You don’t understand. I’m about to turn forty-one. Who am I supposed to be fighting for? For the guy I don’t have? For the children I’ll never have? I’m tired… I don’t even have the nerve to end it all.”
Michèle, when faced with her husband’s infidelity, doesn’t have the courage to call him on it.
”I still haven’t spoken to Vincent. As long as the words aren’t spoken, the things they conceal have no reality…three words on a cell phone have turned me into this tense, nervous, unhappy woman I scarcely recognize.”
But Michèle does eventually act (“Molly, you would be proud of me”) and that is why she will survive when Molly cannot.
At its finest, this novel is a meditation on the nature of courage in the face of challenge. Sometimes it takes more than we think we have. But without courage, life can lose its meaning. Layered into the meditation are the uncertainties that come with friendships and married relationships. What do we owe one another? How we deal with our relationships, and with our challenges, will define us. ...more
”We are lucky to live now, I mean, look how far we’ve come.”—from “Foucault’s Funk”
Chris Abani, when when asked by Walter Mosley in 2010, said he was a novelist first because he thought in stories. He works on poetry and novels concurrently, using one to break the logjams of the other. He works constantly.
The poems in this connection are food, a kind of fruit we have never tasted before, good in our mouth but unfamiliar on our tongue. We try something new in every poem, moving from Paris to the Caribbean, from California to New Zealand. Africa is there, and New York, Harare, Egypt, and Antwerp. At the pyramids
"Rabab tells me: We know how to build graves here. I nod. I know. It is the same all over Africa."
One extraordinary twelve-part poem, “Buffalo Women,” imagines the correspondence between a white woman and a recently emancipated slave who is fighting in the Civil War. The agony of their separation and the possibility of no return is everywhere evident.
In “A Warrior’s Pride,” we learn to sharpen a broadsword till it cleaves a single blade of grass. Soot, ash, water, stone.
”Grandfather says: Heed this! A severed head cannot be put back This is a warrior’s wisdom.”
In Auckland, Abani feels at home. Sometimes mistaken for a Maori (“It can be dangerous”), he says
"All of me meets here, an alchemy of parts-- the Pacific of residence, the Atlantic of birth, the English of heritage, and a culture, like mine, old enough to have words for birthing the earth."
My favorites in the collection are “Low-Down Dirty Blues,” written for Walter Mosley, and “Harare” which has a refrain in each stanza “This is kwela.” Kwela is a distinctive pennywhistle-based jazzy urban street music from South Africa (according to Wikipedia) that has influenced Western music, notably Paul Simon’s album “Graceland” (released in 1986). Another favorite in this collection is
Unfinished Symphony
The light this morning is an aria, I turn back to the stirring of the coffee. A way to ground this time between the hush and the turning. Outside a hummingbird is spreading rumors among flowers. Even now. Even after all the wounds have healed, I scratch around a phantom scab, avoiding what lies beneath. When I open the window, rosemary and thyme spill in. Later I will loam in the herb garden, crumbling the dirt, whispering dirges, spicing the plants with sharpness. For now, there is Percival’s painted fire and the coffee. Sometimes it is enough.
In a TED talk filmed in 2008, Abani told us about seeding the names of the dead, singing melancholic dirges while planting. When it comes time to harvest, joyful songs commemorate the village’s newborns. The other reference in this poem is to the paintings of novelist Percival Everett.
This collection, first published in 2006 by Copper Canyon Press, is now available as an ebook by that publisher. The Notes at the end of this collection give the reader a frame of reference for each poem, except for the title poem, which has no notes. ...more
If I had one book to give someone interested in understanding ISIS and the threats we now face from Islamic militancy, it would be this one. PublishedIf I had one book to give someone interested in understanding ISIS and the threats we now face from Islamic militancy, it would be this one. Published in August 2015, this book includes material through the summer of that year, but also digests and explains some of the earlier reports coming out of Syria, the Middle East, and South Asia. Burke also addresses the threat of home-grown terrorism that is most real to Western communities and governments.
Burke began reporting on events relating to the change in the Islamic character of the Middle East and South Asia as a journalist in the 1990s and he has refined his understanding of the changes in those regions ever since. His grasp is both deep and wide—he wishes he could have included more about the movement in South and Southeast Asia because, in his conclusions at the end, he believes that could be the next area to source individuals committed to jihad.
Burke reiterates over the course of his narrative that terrorism is meant to force leaders to act quickly, make mistakes, and take action they ordinarily would not do, destabilizing their governments. Terror is meant to make individuals disrupt their daily routines, causing follow-on economic repercussions. And terror is meant to cause the populace to polarize: people to question their relationships, fear their neighbors, challenge their government, and consider violence. One might argue terror has already caused irremediable changes in the fabric of world society. Burke replies that we must become resilient, savvy, and knowledgeable. Terrorism in the Middle East may have already run its course, but the seeds are everywhere.
The book is not long, and those of you already well-schooled in the history of ISIS may not feel you need to reread the beginning, though I found Burke’s finesse added a depth to my own understanding of the region, besides being the tightest, clearest history I’ve yet seen. Burke adds to the work done previously by making cogent comment on others’ conclusions. For years I’d been wondering about the families of suicide bombers, their apparent acquiescence causing me to question my own understanding of family ties. Burke addresses this directly:
"Suicide bombing is neither a cheap weapon, as often said, nor the spontaneous, organic expression of the inchoate rage of a people. It is a tactic, adopted for specific strategic reasons by terrorists, and which involves the commitment of significant resources if it is going to be successful. The extremist organizations that pioneered the use of the tactic—such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers—rapidly learned that few communities naturally accept the voluntary death of their teenagers. The individual who becomes a human bomb may cost an organization less than a missile but any militant hoping to reply suicide attackers needs to invest heavily and systematically in propaganda designed to build and then maintain a ‘cult of the martyr’ if they are avoid a backlash from relatives, friends and their wider circle. It is not natural for a mother or a father to celebrate the death of a child, and the idea that young men, or increasingly women, should kill themselves in order to kill others, often civilians, has to be normalized…in practical terms, meanwhile, the families of ‘martyrs’ need to be looked after; funerals organized and paid for, valedictory films produced and broadcast; a dedicated infrastructure to find, isolate and condition ‘martyrs’ set up and run. This effort must be constant and places a considerable strain on a groups’ resources. Many Islamic extremist organizations, including IS, make disproportionate use of foreign volunteers as suicide attackers. One reason may well be to make a powerful statement about the extent of their support around the globe. But another may simply be that foreigners are cheaper."
Burke briefly traces the history and methods of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, their differences and similarities, and their current state of play, including their affiliates around the world. He then discusses the threat to the West, drawing on the most important conclusions of Western analysts regarding what has been called home-grown terror or “lone wolves.” He first focuses on terror incidents in Britain and Europe, which I found particularly enlightening. With regards to America, Burke focuses most intensely on the Marathon Bombers in Boston.
Burke takes issue with the notion of ‘lone wolf,’ arguing that the similarities of the public statements of those with wearing this label use many of the same words and concepts, implying an underlying global community that extends far beyond their individual actions. “These men were formed, conditioned and prepared for their ultimate acts over years, if not decades, by an entire culture of extremist activism.”
An interesting outcome of the Arab Spring, Burke notes, is that several relatively Westernized pro-democracy activists turned to Islamic militancy when they were disillusioned during the fifty months from 2011 to 2015 when regimes collapsed, governments failed, and the international community did little to stave off deprivation for citizens facing war or displacement. He speaks of the gangland ethos among converts to Islamic militancy, the ‘jihadi cool,’ and 'jihad meets The Sweeney meets the gangsta.’ There is exploitable weakness there, for both the converts and for the main terror group.
In the final chapter on the future of terror, Burke discusses several completely fascinating long-term surveys or polls done in huge swathes of Islamic territory. The U.S.-based Pew Center published one in 2013 which revealed that support for suicide bombing remains limited, concerns about extremism are high, and levels of support for Al Qaeda remain low, but that perceptions of Western society are are increasingly negative, including views of Christians and Jews. On the Western side, we don't need to go further than our newspapers and TV reports to know that perceptions of Muslims are tanking.
Burke’s final chapter is one readers will not want to miss. In it Burke describes the outcomes of this history of terror—the divisions we see in our societies, the retrenchments in rights, the fear, the polarity—despite the relative lack of physical impact of terror on Western communities. “The real impact of Islamic militancy…is in the Islamic world where the monthly death toll frequently exceeds the total in the West over the past decade.” But the West has had costs: by focusing on terror we did not focus on climate change, the relationships between the West and Arab or Islamic populations have become poisonous, and our own communities have divisions that are destroying us from within. How we deal with the threats we face will define us long into the future.
This book has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2016....more
This novella is Modiano’s first publication since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014. Translated into twenty-five languages, it allows readeThis novella is Modiano’s first publication since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014. Translated into twenty-five languages, it allows readers to become familiar with the haunting style that I predict is Modiano’s signature. In 2016 I plan to read the novel Villa Trieste, and the screenplay Modiano collaborated on with the filmmaker Louis Malle, called Lacombe Lucien.
This is a novel of remembrance, forgetting, and foreboding, aligning the present with the past and the future. Modiano illuminates how the shadows of memory keep us from knowing who we are.
I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow. --STENDHAL, Modiano’s epigraph
Monsieur Jean Daragane was dozing in his study on a hot summer day in Paris when the insistent ring of his telephone shatters his isolation.
"Almost nothing. Like an insect bite that initially strikes you as very slight. At least that is what you tell yourself in a low voice so as to reassure yourself."
The caller is unknown to him, but has a “dreary and threatening voice.” Monsieur Daragne has lost his address book, and the caller has his name, address, and phone number. He wants to come over and question Mr. Daragne about a name he discovered in the book—a name possibly associated with a murder.
It was all so long ago. Monsieur Daragne is old now, and he no longer cares about the address book, nor the lives represented within it. The numbers he remembers by heart will ring in places where no one will answer any more. The person the caller asks Daragne about he claims not to remember, though the caller points out that Daragne’s first novel references a man by that name. The caller’s insistence starts a landslide of memories, once long hidden, uncovering a past Daragne had buried.
This is a book short enough to be read in an evening, and when I was browsing in a bookstore one day before Christmas, I was so struck by the menace in the opening lines that I knew this would be my introduction to the work of Modiano. Cheers! ...more
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