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A review by ilse
Catherine Certitude by Patrick Modiano
5.0
We always stay the same, and the people we have been in the past go on living until the end of time.
Utterly charming, tender and moving story on a father and a daughter, delightfully relatable for this since childhood bespectacled reader who used to be on ballet class for years as well.
You don’t wear glasses when you dance. I would practice not wearing my glasses during the day. The shape of people and things lost their sharpness and everything was blurry. Even sounds became muffled. Without my glasses, the world lost its roughness and became as soft and downy as the big pillow I used to lean my cheek against before going to sleep. When I wore my glasses, I saw the world as it was. I couldn’t dream anymore.
We would stand there, the two of us, Papa’s hand on my shoulders, without moving. We looked as if we were posing for a photograph, I took off my glasses, and Papa took off his. Everything around us became soft and fuzzy. Time stopped. We felt fine.
It is true, magic exists, and sometimes it comes in the shape of a book, pairing Jean-Jacques Sempé's poetic illustrations with Patrick Modiano's melancholic prose.
Utterly charming, tender and moving story on a father and a daughter, delightfully relatable for this since childhood bespectacled reader who used to be on ballet class for years as well.
You don’t wear glasses when you dance. I would practice not wearing my glasses during the day. The shape of people and things lost their sharpness and everything was blurry. Even sounds became muffled. Without my glasses, the world lost its roughness and became as soft and downy as the big pillow I used to lean my cheek against before going to sleep. When I wore my glasses, I saw the world as it was. I couldn’t dream anymore.
We would stand there, the two of us, Papa’s hand on my shoulders, without moving. We looked as if we were posing for a photograph, I took off my glasses, and Papa took off his. Everything around us became soft and fuzzy. Time stopped. We felt fine.
It is true, magic exists, and sometimes it comes in the shape of a book, pairing Jean-Jacques Sempé's poetic illustrations with Patrick Modiano's melancholic prose.