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A review by ilse
Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano
4.0
Is it my fault that I am still a prisoner of my memories?
The after-effects of the collaboration and the Occupation
Written in 1972, Ring Roads is the third part of what has become known as Patrick Modiano’s Occupation Trilogy. As the first part, [b:La Place de l’Étoile|323535|La Place de l’Étoile|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472890343l/323535._SY75_.jpg|314240], was the first novel I happened to read by Modiano (while travelling by train to Bruges, in the year 2006), it struck me that despite the familiar topics (the sleuth-like search for time and people from the past, nocturnal scenes, memory, the second world war, the collaboration, the strained relationship with a neglectful parent) the tone of Ring Roads turned out quite different from the one I remember from the sardonic [b:La Place de l’Étoile|323535|La Place de l’Étoile|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472890343l/323535._SY75_.jpg|314240]). Ring Roads is composed in a melancholic minor key and its tone leans closer towards his later work (eg [b:So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood|24452592|So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440508583l/24452592._SY75_.jpg|42854846], particularly with regard to the shadow hunting for the past and in this case the impossibility to elude the looming weight of the father figure instead of the uninvolved mother.
Multiple echoes of Proust adorn the pages and Freud is looking around the corner too, taking the shape of a what comes across as a volte-face of the Oedipus myth, in which the father attempts to kill the son instead of vice versa, the son appears as an accidental passer-by in the life of father while the son is aware of their kinship and the son acts a guardian angel watching over the father trying to preserve him from the gang of thugs, ex-collaborators and shady creatures of the night that has him in their grubby paws, blackmailing the father because he is on the run.
Set partly in Paris and (probably) Barbizon shortly after the second world war, an atmosphere of menace pervades the nocturnal scenes in which the group gathers. Some of the group members are chased by the authorities and fear the settling of scores, both within the criminal milieu as by the state, requiring them to reckon for their collaboration with the Nazi occupier, having being active as a journalist in the collaborationist press or involved in the French Gestapo (as often, Modiano alludes to the Carlingue, known also as the French Gestapo, which operated in collaboration with the German Gestapo during the occupation. Based at 93 rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, this group of thugs, gangsters and professional criminals was founded by a corrupt ex-policeman. After a trial at the end of 1944, some group members were executed, but others managed to slip through the net. Some features of Modiano’s characters in Ring Roads are inspired by a couple of those involved in the Carlingue (eg Robert Brasillach, a list can be found here.)
Try though we might, we will never know peace, the sweet stillness of things. We will walk on quicksand to the end.
Against this background, Modiano explores the father-son relationship, in which the father’s attempt to kill the narrator– as well as the suggestion of another murder - might as well have been merely imaginary or symbolic, not unusual in Modiano’s shadow-hunting which is coloured by the blurring brought by oblivion and the unreliability of memory. Last week, a friend pointed me at the fascinating contrast between Modiano’s evocation of the vagueness of memory versus the very detailed indications of places, squares and streets in his oeuvre (a whole catalogue has been made of the streets in Paris featuring in his novels, [b:Paris dans les pas de Patrick Modiano|55246509|Paris dans les pas de Patrick Modiano|Gilles Schlesser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1599395744l/55246509._SX50_.jpg|86139268]). Ring Roads is no exception in that respect, although some allusions are more indirect than in his later work.
Have you noticed, Baron, how quiet Paris is tonight? We glide along the empty boulevards. The trees shiver, their branches forming a protective vault above our heads. Here and there a lighted window. The owners have fled have forgotten to turn off the lights. Later, I’ll walk through this city and it will seem as empty to me as it does today. I will lose myself in the maze of streets, searching for your shadow. Until I become one with it.
Having savoured this excellent episode in my long-standing addiction to/tango with the novels of Patrick Modiano, it is time to read part two of the Occupation Trilogy. Unsurprisingly, I look forward to the new novel of Modiano which will be published in October 2023, [b:La danseuse|154475681|La danseuse|Patrick Modiano|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|168549464].
Because I will take a break from reading and reviewing for the coming months in order to study for a couple of exams, this will probably be the last review I’ll post for a while. I hope to return to books and this site in November – in the meantime, I wish all of you happy reading and reviewing ♥.
Novels of Patrick Modiano on which I posted reviews:
Scene of the Crime
Cathérine Certitude
Vestiaire de l’enfance
Family Record
Sleep of Memory
So You don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood
A song Ring Roads resuscitated in my mind:
To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth
In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor
And with cold steel odour on their bodies made a move to connect
But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left
I did everything, everything I wanted to
I let them use you for their own ends
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you
(Joy Divison, Shadowplay)
(Photographs by Robert Doisneau)
The after-effects of the collaboration and the Occupation
Written in 1972, Ring Roads is the third part of what has become known as Patrick Modiano’s Occupation Trilogy. As the first part, [b:La Place de l’Étoile|323535|La Place de l’Étoile|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472890343l/323535._SY75_.jpg|314240], was the first novel I happened to read by Modiano (while travelling by train to Bruges, in the year 2006), it struck me that despite the familiar topics (the sleuth-like search for time and people from the past, nocturnal scenes, memory, the second world war, the collaboration, the strained relationship with a neglectful parent) the tone of Ring Roads turned out quite different from the one I remember from the sardonic [b:La Place de l’Étoile|323535|La Place de l’Étoile|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472890343l/323535._SY75_.jpg|314240]). Ring Roads is composed in a melancholic minor key and its tone leans closer towards his later work (eg [b:So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood|24452592|So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood|Patrick Modiano|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440508583l/24452592._SY75_.jpg|42854846], particularly with regard to the shadow hunting for the past and in this case the impossibility to elude the looming weight of the father figure instead of the uninvolved mother.
Multiple echoes of Proust adorn the pages and Freud is looking around the corner too, taking the shape of a what comes across as a volte-face of the Oedipus myth, in which the father attempts to kill the son instead of vice versa, the son appears as an accidental passer-by in the life of father while the son is aware of their kinship and the son acts a guardian angel watching over the father trying to preserve him from the gang of thugs, ex-collaborators and shady creatures of the night that has him in their grubby paws, blackmailing the father because he is on the run.
Set partly in Paris and (probably) Barbizon shortly after the second world war, an atmosphere of menace pervades the nocturnal scenes in which the group gathers. Some of the group members are chased by the authorities and fear the settling of scores, both within the criminal milieu as by the state, requiring them to reckon for their collaboration with the Nazi occupier, having being active as a journalist in the collaborationist press or involved in the French Gestapo (as often, Modiano alludes to the Carlingue, known also as the French Gestapo, which operated in collaboration with the German Gestapo during the occupation. Based at 93 rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, this group of thugs, gangsters and professional criminals was founded by a corrupt ex-policeman. After a trial at the end of 1944, some group members were executed, but others managed to slip through the net. Some features of Modiano’s characters in Ring Roads are inspired by a couple of those involved in the Carlingue (eg Robert Brasillach, a list can be found here.)
Try though we might, we will never know peace, the sweet stillness of things. We will walk on quicksand to the end.
Against this background, Modiano explores the father-son relationship, in which the father’s attempt to kill the narrator– as well as the suggestion of another murder - might as well have been merely imaginary or symbolic, not unusual in Modiano’s shadow-hunting which is coloured by the blurring brought by oblivion and the unreliability of memory. Last week, a friend pointed me at the fascinating contrast between Modiano’s evocation of the vagueness of memory versus the very detailed indications of places, squares and streets in his oeuvre (a whole catalogue has been made of the streets in Paris featuring in his novels, [b:Paris dans les pas de Patrick Modiano|55246509|Paris dans les pas de Patrick Modiano|Gilles Schlesser|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1599395744l/55246509._SX50_.jpg|86139268]). Ring Roads is no exception in that respect, although some allusions are more indirect than in his later work.
Have you noticed, Baron, how quiet Paris is tonight? We glide along the empty boulevards. The trees shiver, their branches forming a protective vault above our heads. Here and there a lighted window. The owners have fled have forgotten to turn off the lights. Later, I’ll walk through this city and it will seem as empty to me as it does today. I will lose myself in the maze of streets, searching for your shadow. Until I become one with it.
Having savoured this excellent episode in my long-standing addiction to/tango with the novels of Patrick Modiano, it is time to read part two of the Occupation Trilogy. Unsurprisingly, I look forward to the new novel of Modiano which will be published in October 2023, [b:La danseuse|154475681|La danseuse|Patrick Modiano|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|168549464].
Because I will take a break from reading and reviewing for the coming months in order to study for a couple of exams, this will probably be the last review I’ll post for a while. I hope to return to books and this site in November – in the meantime, I wish all of you happy reading and reviewing ♥.
Novels of Patrick Modiano on which I posted reviews:
Scene of the Crime
Cathérine Certitude
Vestiaire de l’enfance
Family Record
Sleep of Memory
So You don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood
A song Ring Roads resuscitated in my mind:
To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth
In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor
And with cold steel odour on their bodies made a move to connect
But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left
I did everything, everything I wanted to
I let them use you for their own ends
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you
(Joy Divison, Shadowplay)
(Photographs by Robert Doisneau)