Honeymoon

Read a Q&A in NYT with a French architect who mentioned this author as one of his favorites. I took up his suggestion and read this book. I loved it and will read more by this creative writer. He starts the story and you feel there some sort of mystery attached (but the novel is not a mystery). You become taken in by the writing (which is wonderful and spare) and the descriptions of the characters. I was hooked right away.

In order to appreciate this book, you must know a good deal about the holocaust in France, otherwise you won't have a clue about what is going on. To love this book you should probably read another half dozen or so of Modiano's other books. Now that he won a Nobel Prize, they are beginning to come out in good and even excellent translations, so that should be fun.

"Honeymoon" (Voyage de noces) is one of Modiano’s novels in which the mystery proposed at the commencement of the book is more or less solved (spoiler alert). The plot is straightforward: it is told in a series of shifting scenes and time warps that provide a sense of depth that a linear narrative would not be able to accomplish. Jean B, a documentary film-maker, is on his way to Paris by train. He has a stopover in Milan. While there, he learns that a Frenchwoman killed herself in his hotel just two days before. Later, he realizes he knew the woman when he was twenty, eighteen years ago. Not long after returning to Paris, instead of flying to Rio for work, he abandons his wife and his life and goes to live in the Parisian suburbs in an attempt to piece together the life of the woman who committed suicide: Ingrid Teyrsen. He explains why he is doing this to a friend: It’s very simple. "I just feel tired of my life and my job." He admits he may attempt to write her biography. The novel is bounded by two newspaper notices. The first notice Jean B reads in the train on the way to Paris. Printed in the "Corriere della Sera", it is the formal report of Ingrid’s suicide. The second notice, we learn later, was given to Jean by Ingrid Teyrsen herself many years earlier. It is a notice that had been placed in a Paris paper when she was a girl, a notice penned by her father: "Missing: Ingrid Teyrsen, sixteen, 1M60, oval face, grey eyes, brown sports coat, light blue pullover, beige skirt and hat, black casual shoes. All information to M. Teyrsen, 39bis, Boulevard Ornano, Paris." Between these two notices, we learn through Jean B some details of Ingrid’s life. She was married to a man named Rigaud. Jean B met her and her husband purely by chance, in the south of France during the final months of World War II. The couple was hiding out on the Côte d'Azur, telling people they were on honeymoon. They picked Jean B up hitchhiking, took him with them to Saint-Tropez, and insisted that he stay with them for a few days. When he had to go, they paid for his train ticket to Paris, even giving him spending money since his was stolen. That is the last he sees of Ingrid until years later, when, once again by chance, he happens upon her in Paris. They have a meal together and a desultory conversation during which Jean B notes: "It does also happen that one evening, because of someone’s attentive gaze, you feel a need to communicate to them not your experience, but quite simply some of the various details connected by an invisible thread, a thread which is in danger of breaking and which is called the course of a life." And of course, the thread had broken. Jean’s detective work uncovers the fact that Ingrid’s father was an Austrian Jew (and that she is therefore half-Jewish) and he couldn’t leave the city after the Germans inva...

When I found out this author won the Nobel prize I got curious and started reading his books. They are not to long to feel overwhelming and his writing style is easy to follow and flows well. I don't know a good spot to start with reading this author but perhaps Missing Person might be the best place to start in reading this author. He raises a great deal of question in this book like do we spend to much time trying to find out about ourselves and miss living perhaps?

Modiano is one of the most elegant writers imaginable. He never looks at the thing directly, but always from an angle. You must read the book at least twice to appreciate its artistry and power. And this reading is a marvel, although, on the picky side. the narrator skips the penultimate page of the novel, thus leading to an abrupt and confounding ending. (He probably turned two pages instead of one as he was recording the final part of the book, alas.)