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But what will happen to the protagonists? Twelve years later, Victor will look back at that long-ago summer and his lost friends. Yvonne is a world-famous actress now; the homosexual Meinthe who may have been involved with the clandestine services in relation to the Algerian war, commits suicide one day by turning on the gas in his house. The pace is unhurried, meditative; more than telling a story, he is evoking a milieu , a certain ambience. Refracted through the thick glass of memory. There is that languid air of unknowing, so redolent of French literature and cinema of that era.
Part mystery, part tedium. And yet by the end of the book, I was completely in its grip, its perverse slowness, the fate of its characters. I wonder if he wrote a sequel Deliciously dark, decadent and detached, yet desperately dull. In fact, the novel is about checkered pasts: All have attempted to hide away their pasts, even though two of them continue to live in the Haute Savoie town in which they were born. In fact, the only really authentic, grounded person in the story is Yvonne's Uncle Roland, who runs a garage for repairing American cars -- a business he had started with Yvonne's late father.
This type of authenticity of character is a theme for Modiano, whose own father was a bit of a charlatan and whose mother was so awful that her own dog committed suicide by leaping off a balcony. Read Modiano's autobiographical Pedigree. There is something haunting about all of Modiano's works that I have read. It is as if they were people by Pinocchios who wishes that they could be real boys.
Sep 22, Kaloyana rated it it was ok.
Victor, the main protagonist, and Yvonne, an actress, although they all appear to be acting and Dr. Menthe… we learn his father was a martyr of the French Resistance. Time has stood still. Danger from war is one subject Victor refers to often. Using a false identity, he is not Victor, much less a Count, as he claims. Not much has changed, with the exception of the presence of the Occupation, there is no danger anymore, or is there? But Victor lives in the past. He holds on to mementos from the past - material or mental, he holds on.
He cannot free himself and lives with anxiety and fear, yet thoroughly enjoying the company of Yvonne and the lifestyle she and Dr. Meinth have in this small town. If this review sounds a bit confusing, well that is how I found this book! Confusing at times, but I still felt compelled to finish this true work of art, this beautifully written piece of literature. Melancholy sucked me in from the beginning with a Great Dane dog that also appears to be acting! Why did I bother to finish reading this book? I felt if I kept reading, it would all come together and make perfect sense.
The methodic storytelling captured my curiosity, as the style of writing is dream like.
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Surely I would eventually comprehend the story fully, the characters purpose and connection to one another, their past, their present. But it was not meant to be. I did connect a few of the dots to this puzzle, but mostly speculation, as the author confirms very little for me. Even in the end, right up to the last sentences the author plays with my curiosity. A suitcase left behind at the train station - why? I'm curious as to what was inside and I question the symbolic meaning the author had in this action.
Sadly, I need a college professor to help me decipher it all! Confusing yet compelling, not a book for everyone - 4 stars for the compelling nature that kept me reading - 3 stars for the story line as I could not get the pieces to come together and satisfy my curiosity. About the Author A little research online helps me better understand this author which helps me confirm some of my thoughts about this book.
Apparently all of his works are of similar themes.
His novels delve into the puzzle of identity, and of trying to track evidence of existence through the traces of the past. In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born. Insipid luxury; sickly-sweet smell in the corridors which I can't identify but must be the very odor of anxiety, of instability, of exile, of phoniness.
He reveals that he never lived in one place, he shares he has anxiety and talks of exile, feeling he does not belong anywhere, yearning to have lived in the small French town like that of Yvonne and Menthe, who seemed to have experienced an idyllic life growing up there.
- Villa Triste No. 953 by Patrick Modiano (Paperback).
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Victor feels like a man, a race, without a country - I could speculate for days on just this paragraph! Early on you learn Victor is Jewish, passing himself as a Count, a fake persona, perhaps as he and his family did during the war? He is always running, has no home?
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These are just my interpretations of one paragraph, you will have to come to your own conclusions should you choose to read this book. I would suggest researching the author and some of his other works to help explain his thought processes prior to reading. View all 5 comments. Less so Patrick Modiano, whose initial three novels or novellas, if you prefer were topi 4 Modiano stars, on a scale only of Patrick Modiano novels My favorite novelists all published first or second novels that established them as immediate or soon-to-be literary stars: In Villa Triste , the nostalgia is that of Victor Chmara reminiscing about his love and life almost thirteen years earlier, in about , when he was eighteen.
Where did Chmara grow up: Chmara is apparently stateless, perhaps living in some danger and perhaps fleeing an only partially revealed past: The noise of war, the din of the world would have had to pass through a wall of cotton wall to reach this holiday oasis. And who would have ever thought of coming to look for me among these distinguished summer vacationers? Modiano, a cineaste even in this early novel, reveals that Bella Darvi and Victor are cousins.
Unexpected Lessons in Philosophy, Business and Everyday Life
And again typical of later Modiano novels, the romance and the sex between Victor and Yvonne exist only as delicate hints. As in Sundays in August , Modiano provides a shady, older consort for the couple, with a large, showy automobile. For Modiano, the role of the consort—the third wheel—is especially important.
Even at thirty, he had already honed his ability to engage readers through memories and mysteries.