In the Café of Lost Youth

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Her stab at marriage, the orbits of the Condé, her relationship with Roland seem like efforts to find a role and place -- but none are sufficient.

Modiano's parents met in occupied Paris during World War II and began a clandestine relationship. Modiano's childhood took place in a unique atmosphere: with an absent father -- of which he heard troubled stories of dealings with the Vichy regime -- and a Flemish-actress mother who frequently toured. His younger brother's sudden death also greatly influenced his writings. And whereas Bowing tries to create 'fixed points' for reference -- "it's almost like a police register or a precinct logbook", one person observes -- Roland had tried to write a text in those days called On Neutral Zones, trying to chart:

Success!

At the halfway point of the journey making up real life, we were surrounded by a gloomy melancholy, one expressed by so very many derisive and sorrowful words in the cafe of lost youth. 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. First there is a student at the nearby Sorbonne, then a private investigator hired by the woman's abandoned husband, followed by Louki herself and concluded by an artist companion. Louki is in fact alive. In body. But her soul is endlessly unstill. Whether she's "here, there or elsewhere. In (her) beginning." Step by step though, the author guided me from the tourist view to the disturbing, sad inner landscape of people living at the edge of society – misfits, bohemians, loners – a group of mostly young people who meet at the 'Conde' more to hide from the world than to plan to take it by storm. Stopping at a Tabac buying Le Parisien and exchanging the obligatory courtesies, sitting in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont watching life pass by. Taking in the facades of the buildings in the Quartier Tolbiac, almost expecting to bump into Nestor Burma when I turn the next corner.

Like W.G. Sebald, another European writer haunted by memory and by the history that took place just before he was born, Modiano combines a detective’s curiosity with an elegist’s melancholy.”—Adam Kirsch, The New Republic Where did Louki come from? What was her past like? What is with this enigma surrounding her? It appears that no one really knows.Louki's escapes started years before as a lonely child left to fend for herself by an unknown father and a mother working long evening hours at a cabaret in Pigalle. She started to walk the night streets alone as a teenager, got in trouble with the police and sought help from a friendly woman casually met on the street, ending in the circle of local drug smugglers from another small cafe. En medio de esos personajes, destaca una tal Louki, a la que todos se refieren en sus recuerdos. Louki aglutina el puzzle que gira en torno a las memorias de varios personajes de la novela. The cemetery at Montparnasse, not far from where Louki lives, is shown here: https://www.tumblr.com/ Photo by SerpentKiss

She was taking refuge here, at the Condé, as if she were running from something, trying to escape some danger. “ Modiano is a pure original. He has transformed the novel into a laboratory for producing atmospheres, not situations—where everything must be inferred and nothing can be proved.”—Adam Thirwell, The Guardian Loosely, the story revolves around a mysterious young Bohemian woman, Louki, described from several points of view: a young student who frequents the same café; a private-eye hired by her much-older husband to find her; Roland, her friend and possible lover; and Louki herself.Note: This review refers to the US/New York Review Books edition, translated by Chris Clarke; the UK edition (MacLehose Press, also 2016) was translated by Euan Cameron.]

There is a sense of sadness as I begin to write my review of this book. Sadness because the book is about someone or something lost; the titular youth or the selves each of the four narrators has left behind. But also sadness because nothing is crystal clear, there is no certainty or redemption anywhere.He is a winner of the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".