Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano

The novels of French writer Patrick Modiano hang on pensive remembrances. Often compared to Marcel Proust, he blurs the lines between memories held and lost. His title So You Don't Get Lost In The Neighborhood was more of a mystery, but Honeymoon draws the reader close, with a complex timeline simply laid out.

On a Milan stopover, Jean escapes the heat in the cool semi-darkness of the hotel bar. A woman killed herself in the hotel two days prior. A Frenchwoman, a brunette. Someone is coming from Capri to collect her.

Jean realizes it was Ingrid, a woman he met in his youth. If only he was there earlier. He recalls hitchhiking near Saint-Tropez when he was eighteen, catching a ride with Ingrid and Rigaud, spending a few days with the couple at their beachside rental, befriended as if they already knew him.

Jean is a filmmaker married to Annette, who is having an affair with their friend Cavanaugh (and also the young student Ben). Despite seeing him to the airport, no one knows Jean did not board the plane to Rio. He remains in Paris, the aim of his journey all along, staying at small local hotels he frequented in his youth. "Disappeared, yes, I'd disappeared."

Ten years ago he began writing a biography of Ingrid, which he picks up again, finding them at 16 and 21 on the Cote d'Azur in 1942, fleeing Paris as the resistance mounted more attacks, a curfew plunging the city into silent darkness. They claimed to be honeymooners, hiding out at a seaside resort, where the war seemed so far away, until the police shut everything down.

Jean tracks down the abandoned apartment once occupied by Ingrid and Rigaud, where he will stay, wondering if Rigaud will ever return.

Modiano writes dream-like melodious language, soft and questioning. Not everything is explained, the reader contemplating with the author as the history of the couple is played out. His novels delve into the puzzle of identity, and Jean's "excavation of the past slowly becomes an all-encompassing obsession".

Among many awards, Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.

My other review for Patrick Modiano:

So You Don't Get Lost In The Neighborhood 

1990 / Tradeback / 122 pages