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3.06 AVERAGE
3.06 AVERAGE
bluemoosetom's review against another edition
2.0
The best word to describe this book for me would be: imperfect. More in the grammatical sense where there just seems to be so much unfinished and unresolved at the end of this novella.
This book plays a lot with the vagueness and mutability of memory and the writing made it seem somewhat surreal. The uncertainty about all the events of Jean Daragane's life as a child and a young man is intriguing, but I wish it had been slightly more resolved. Especially given how furtive and reclusive he is as an older man in his sixties, it makes one wonder what exactly happened and if that is the reason for his rather odd behavior later in life.
The time periods jump around without much clarification, and I had some difficulty tracking the conversations to know who was speaking or who the antecedents to various pronouns were. Not sure if this was due to the writer's style or the translation, but it added to the nebulous nature of the story.
Read tangentially to the Reader's Emporium Book Club. I did not make the 12/20/2016 meeting.
This book plays a lot with the vagueness and mutability of memory and the writing made it seem somewhat surreal. The uncertainty about all the events of Jean Daragane's life as a child and a young man is intriguing, but I wish it had been slightly more resolved. Especially given how furtive and reclusive he is as an older man in his sixties, it makes one wonder what exactly happened and if that is the reason for his rather odd behavior later in life.
The time periods jump around without much clarification, and I had some difficulty tracking the conversations to know who was speaking or who the antecedents to various pronouns were. Not sure if this was due to the writer's style or the translation, but it added to the nebulous nature of the story.
Read tangentially to the Reader's Emporium Book Club. I did not make the 12/20/2016 meeting.
lvmegan's review against another edition
1.0
I hope that someday I will be able to read this book in French. The translation was not satisfactory for me. I felt that much, which seemed like had been there at some point, was lost in translation.
jonfaith's review against another edition
4.0
Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know.
Welcome to a simple yet disturbing turn. Modiano provides a world where the pieces don't quite fit. There are gaps and incongruities here. Chance encounters jar an author from his solitude. He himself is expected to provide answers, which only disorients him further. Insert citations about Noir and Beckett: I am not sure that will help. This is a fresh voice, even if the material appears familiar, almost recalled -- in fact.
I am not sure I could have appreciated this if I was younger. There is something about the mind's blind spots and our self-editing which doesn't reveal itself until a few streaks of gray have adorned our weary heads.
Welcome to a simple yet disturbing turn. Modiano provides a world where the pieces don't quite fit. There are gaps and incongruities here. Chance encounters jar an author from his solitude. He himself is expected to provide answers, which only disorients him further. Insert citations about Noir and Beckett: I am not sure that will help. This is a fresh voice, even if the material appears familiar, almost recalled -- in fact.
I am not sure I could have appreciated this if I was younger. There is something about the mind's blind spots and our self-editing which doesn't reveal itself until a few streaks of gray have adorned our weary heads.
jlevitt's review against another edition
3.0
Patrick Modiano’s SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD is a short, page-turning mystery novel. The protagonist is an author who is prompted to revisit puzzling memories of his childhood. I found this book hard to put down and breezed through it in just a few days. If you’re a fan of open-ended mysteries, this one is for you.
aaronrosenblum's review against another edition
2.0
This is an excellent first half of a supsenseful novel about memory and the pasts we forget and make for ourselves. How Modiano got away with not writing literally any conclusion to the story (either the noirish first part or the flashback in the 1950s/60s) I will never know. I literally looked to make sure my copy wasn't missing pages lol.
Is that the point? Yeah, obviously. Is it lazy? Arguable - my hot take might be that coming up with a satisfying or even mechanically sufficient ending is an underrated challenge, and establishing mood and theme - while not easy - are not necessarily compensatory. Is it experimental? ... Sure? But what is the experiment doing?
Is that the point? Yeah, obviously. Is it lazy? Arguable - my hot take might be that coming up with a satisfying or even mechanically sufficient ending is an underrated challenge, and establishing mood and theme - while not easy - are not necessarily compensatory. Is it experimental? ... Sure? But what is the experiment doing?
gardnerhere's review against another edition
3.0
I picked this up on a whim at the library, proving again that not all library whims are rewarded.
I hear the people who find this a moody meditation on the tinted glass of memory, but it didn't work for me.
Were I to blurb it, the publisher would likely take "Evocative..." out of my longer "Evocative but not rewarding" and be done with me.
I hear the people who find this a moody meditation on the tinted glass of memory, but it didn't work for me.
Were I to blurb it, the publisher would likely take "Evocative..." out of my longer "Evocative but not rewarding" and be done with me.
passionsfrucht's review against another edition
5.0
Vergessen, Erinnerungen und die „Schatten des Geschehenen“, damit man sich im Viertel nicht verirrt- heute und damals.
lee_foust's review against another edition
4.0
This novel seemed exactly to fit the description that people tend to give all of Modiano's novels perfectly and which I've always found a little off as descriptions of the few others that I've read. So maybe this is the quintessential Modiano? or maybe it's just the one that many people read first as it came out the same year he won the Nobel so all of the others are somehow seen as variations of it.
At any rate, I really enjoyed it. Like all of his novels it meanders in a kind of haze of the narrator's combined indifference, melancholy, and a vague nostalgic longing for they seem to know not what. Nothing is resolved. It doesn't even seem like resolution could ever be an option. Such narratives might be a little too close to actual reality for many readers. I loved it.
At any rate, I really enjoyed it. Like all of his novels it meanders in a kind of haze of the narrator's combined indifference, melancholy, and a vague nostalgic longing for they seem to know not what. Nothing is resolved. It doesn't even seem like resolution could ever be an option. Such narratives might be a little too close to actual reality for many readers. I loved it.