Reading this hard on the heels of Modiano's The Black Notebook was a disconcerting experience. Both books revolve around old people remembering when they were young. Both books focus on a young woman who has a number of aliases, about whom there is some mystery. Both books feature a detective, both have an author who narrates some if not all of the book. Both involve an iconic Parisian cafe, and students, and walking the Parisan streets and taking the metro. It is as if Modiano has reworked the material.
Especially since both books include the line: "We live at the mercy of certain silences."
Whilst The Black Notebook was contextualised by revolutionary politics, this is contextualised by an interest in magic and the occult. It seems that Louki's favourite book is Lost Horizon, which is a potboiler that may or may not reference the earthly paradise known as Shambhala, or to modern ears Shangri La.
The title is a line taken from ‘In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni’ [We Wander in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire], a 1978 film by Guy Debord, the revolutionary and Situationist.
Selected quotes:
- "If everything was down in black and white, it meant that it was over, just like tombstones that have names and dates carved on them." (p 73)
- "Intermediary zones existed in Paris, no-man's-lands where you were on the fringes of everything, in transit, or even suspended. You enjoyed a degree of immunity there." (p 112)
September 2020; 153 pages
Books and plays written by Nobel Laureates that I have reviewed in this blog can be found here
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