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So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighbourhood
So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighbourhood | Patrick Modiano
8 posts | 13 read | 11 to read
Jean Daragane, writer and recluse, has purposely built a life of seclusion away from the Parisian bustle. He doesn't see many people, he rarely goes out: he spends his life in a solitary world of his own making. His peace is shattered however, one hot September afternoon, by a threatening phone call from a complete stranger, who claims to have found Daragane's old phone book and wants to question him about a particular name it contains. But when Daragane agrees to meet the mysterious Gilles Ottolini, he realises that - try as he might - he cannot place the name "Guy Torstel" at all. Yet Ottolini is desperate for any information on this man... Finding himself suddenly entangled in the lives of Ottolini and his beautiful, but fragile young associate, Daragane is drawn into the mystery of a decades-old murder that will drag him out of his lonely apartment and force him to confront the memory of a long-suppressed personal trauma. Imbued with nostalgia, subtlety, and its own unique poetry, this darkly mysterious novel weaves a spell that provokes as much as it entrances.
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StopGo211
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Picked this up at the library while browsing. Not too familiar with the author but I grabbed this and one other book by him so we'll see what happens.

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Michael_Gee
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Georgella helped @Howardsimmons pick out his next book! Which is really a feat considered she can‘t read and is a cat. Basically she was like: “That one! Or that other one. It doesn‘t really matter just give me a g-d treat.” And she sounds like Liz Taylor in #whosafraidofvirginiawoolf.

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Adventures-of-a-French-Reader
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Pickpick

I finished this book a few days ago. Throughout the story we are facing blurred memories. Can we actually make sense of memories??? That's pretty much what this book is about. Interesting read, but sometimes frustrating...

LeahBergen I love your mug! 😍 6y
Adventures-of-a-French-Reader @LeahBergen Thanks, I got it on Etsy ;) 6y
20 likes2 stack adds2 comments
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My_novel_obsession
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Panpan

This was just too strange and confusing for me.... luckily that is done and I have some exciting books lined up for the long weekend 🤗

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AnnieMay
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Pickpick

I'm still processing how I feel about this book: the writing style felt incredibly opaque to me and even labyrinthine at times. But Modiano is writing about memory in all it's strange fallibility and never ending contortions so even though the experience of reading it could feel frustrating at times, that was obviously very much the point.

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schwaetzchen
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Pickpick

P. M. Literaturnobelpreisträger 2014
Dem Buch vorangestellt ist ein Zitat von Stendhal:
„Ich kann die Wirklichkeit des Geschehenen nicht darstellen, ich kann nur seinen Schatten zeigen.“
Dieses Zitat bringt den kleinen, stillen Roman, über die Schwierigkeiten des Erinnerns auf den Punkt. So erklärt sich auch, warum er einen mit viel mehr Fragen, als Antworten zurücklässt. Die Andeutungen im Buch auf das Rotlichtmilieu werden vom Cover bestätigt.

6 likes1 stack add
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squarepeginroundhole

"It would appear, he often used to say to himself, that children never ask themselves any questions. Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know."

26 likes1 stack add
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squarepeginroundhole
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Mehso-so

This atmospherically falls in the film noir genre which I'm always a fan & my 2nd Modiano book. Unfortunately when this story reached it's end, it went over my head. Unlike in Missing Person, I enjoyed the unresolved ending. Here, I can't say such. Maybe it was a different translator, but I enjoyed the text less overall, even though it had great mood. I felt there was something in it that was just slightly out of reach. May try a reread 1 day.

Paigey7475 Exactly how I felt! It sort of felt like he just stopped... like he cut the book off in the middle with no resolution whatsoever. 8y
JazzFeathers Never read Modiano. But l love noir stories, so l think l'll try him :) 7y
squarepeginroundhole @JazzFeathers Let me know what you think, especially if you find a good one. 7y
35 likes1 stack add3 comments