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A review by jdscott50
So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Euan Cameron, Patrick Modiano
4.0
We are often our own archeologist. We try to decipher and interpret artifacts that have happened in our past in order to determine an event. It is made up of who we are. There are, however, strong reasons why these items have been long buried, but we remember too late.
John Darangue receives a mysterious phone call one afternoon. A stranger is searching for the man Darangue used in one of his early novels. While it seems innocuous, the author is filled with a deep dread of the person and his associate. It does not feel like some random event, but a purposeful threat. When others press him to remember the character, he realizes he has a sort of amnesia about his first book. He uncovers the reason why he wrote it. As he excavates his own past he discovers his own motivations and clues to his own identity.
Modiano's novel gives a wonderful noir air to it that is both hypnotic and hard to put down. Each interaction plunges the main character deeper into himself. Most of the early interactions become red herrings. In the end, it would seem that the entire exercise is a way for the author to explain himself and his technique. It is a way of explaining himself and why he does what he does. It is this part that is the most fascinating told with the most beautiful and insightful prose.
Favorite passages
"...he suddenly found himself confronted with certain details of his life, but reflected in a distorted mirror with those disjointed details that pursue you on nights when you have a temperature." P59
He had never understood why anyone should want to put someone who had mattered to them in a novel. Once that person had drifted into a novel in much the same way as one might walk through a mirror, he escaped from you forever. He had never existed in real life. He had been reduced to nothingness. P76
"...children never ask themselves any questions. Many years afterward, 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 about. P 124
John Darangue receives a mysterious phone call one afternoon. A stranger is searching for the man Darangue used in one of his early novels. While it seems innocuous, the author is filled with a deep dread of the person and his associate. It does not feel like some random event, but a purposeful threat. When others press him to remember the character, he realizes he has a sort of amnesia about his first book. He uncovers the reason why he wrote it. As he excavates his own past he discovers his own motivations and clues to his own identity.
Modiano's novel gives a wonderful noir air to it that is both hypnotic and hard to put down. Each interaction plunges the main character deeper into himself. Most of the early interactions become red herrings. In the end, it would seem that the entire exercise is a way for the author to explain himself and his technique. It is a way of explaining himself and why he does what he does. It is this part that is the most fascinating told with the most beautiful and insightful prose.
Favorite passages
"...he suddenly found himself confronted with certain details of his life, but reflected in a distorted mirror with those disjointed details that pursue you on nights when you have a temperature." P59
He had never understood why anyone should want to put someone who had mattered to them in a novel. Once that person had drifted into a novel in much the same way as one might walk through a mirror, he escaped from you forever. He had never existed in real life. He had been reduced to nothingness. P76
"...children never ask themselves any questions. Many years afterward, 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 about. P 124