In the Café of Lost Youth (New York Review Books Classics)

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The differences are that there are multiple narrators (four to be precise) and that there is a specific theme, as we shall see. There were two entrances to the café, but she always opted for the narrower one hidden in the shadows.

Louki's portrait is sketched by four narrators, each of them in his or her own way a drifter through life who seeks refuge among the friendly and slightly decadent atmosphere of a bar at night.But through flashbacks and other characters – and in one of the four chapters, from Louki herself – we gradually come to understand her troubled and impoverished upbringing. We have the usual sketches of a Paris that has melted into history, showing us smoky cafés full of shady characters, each with a name that’s been adopted for the occasion. That sound will reverberate through the ground floor of Cafè Le Condè, as you delicately place each thought in your heart, from the vibrating passages of the book. He previously won the 2012 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the 2010 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for lifetime achievement, the 1978 Prix Goncourt for Rue des boutiques obscures, and the 1972 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for Les Boulevards de ceinture. She was associated, as are all good Modiano heroes and heroines, with an odd group of people, who were involved with a small restaurant.

Roland, an aspiring poet and novelist, spends more time in bars and roaming the streets than working, yet he is atuned to the central theme of the novel, that of lost youth and of the places where it can be found buried. Instead, his books comprise elements from many different genres: mystery, personal memoir, travelogue, and others. The other three – (Les Chants de Maldoror, Les Illuminations and The Lost Horizon) – are far better-known. Modiano surpasses himself here by filling half a novella with irrelevant street names and other landmarks.Però a diferència de la “recerca” de Proust, el temps i la memoria són irrecuperables, ja que es dissolen juntament amb les llistes de noms, adreces i estacions de metro que intenten, futilment, donar un cert sentit de permanència als vagabunds existencials que habiten aquesta història. Louki lived with Jean-Pierre in the affluent, sterile suburb of Neuilly, where there is an inevitability that the marriage will fail. Each one comes at the story from a slightly different angle, and the multiple narrators help to create a fuller picture of the main character Louki, AKA Jacqueline Delanque.

Modiano has mentioned on Oct 9, 2014, during an interview with La Grande Librairie, that one of the books which had a great impact on his writing life was 'Le cœur est un chasseur solitaire' (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), the first novel published by Carson McCullers in 1940. But it’s as if Young Once was a preliminary sketch or a rough draft for Café of Lost Youth which is much more developed and has much better writing. I would rate this book at the same level as Missing Person (1978), Honeymoon (1990),and Dora Bruder (1997).It’s as if by revisiting these old memories the narrators might somehow be able to slip back into those times, and meet old friends once more. But I also look for meaning, I have this compulsive and probably entirely childish desire for finality, for a truth that will be revealed at the end, a requirement which Modiano does not satisfy. The story is told through multiple voices - so in some senses it is a kaleidoscopic narrative - and for a time the colours are subdued with no overall pattern discernible. But they do this invariably out of a sense of deprivation, a deficit in the present that they are trying to fill with that past.

Lots of things have been written about Modiano's "little music", and once again it is his little music (a certain way of writing, a unique way of creating a special atmosphere, etc) that holds this novel together and makes its undeniable charms. They have interesting nicknames such as "the Jaguar", "the Captain", "Crossbones", and of course Louki.That said, it would have been funny to have some photos, but the only person who had a camera forgot to bring a roll of film. Pour Mircea Eliade, c’est la dialectique du sacré par rapport au profane : la répétition infinie des gestes archétypales afin de les maintenir vivants dans la mémoire collective. I've read countless favorable reviews about Modiano, but I don't realize how it has always escaped me.