Patrick Modiano’s memoir reads like his novels. Names and addresses recited from the past, first embedded in the context of his parent’s lives – then his own – in Paris and elsewhere during the war and after.

His mother, a Belgian actress, was “a pretty girl with an arid heart.” “Beneath the theatricality and fantasy, she had a heart of stone.” His father was a French black marketer who seemed to consider his son a nuisance and pushed Modiano away throughout his life. Together, his parents were “two lost, heedless butterflies in the midst of an indifferent city.”

Modiano’s early life was marked by parental indifference and the loss of his younger brother – no cause is mentioned. “Apart from my brother, Rudy, his death, I don’t believe that anything I’ll relate here truly matters to me.”

The memoir concludes shortly after his first novel is published at age twenty-two. This book, more than any other writer’s that I’ve read, fosters a greater understanding of Modiano’s themes and obsessions. ( )

Patrick Modiano's brief memoir is more a rat-a-tat collection of brief memories rather than the detailed life story of a famous novelist. The book reveals the very hard childhood that Modiano endured, despatched to various institutions by a father who clearly did not want him around and a mother who was too unreliable to look after him. The prose is written in a staccato style where Modiano frequently drops a name, associates it with a very brief glimpse of the past and then moves rapidly on. It's as if the author is trying to hide in plain sight.

I doubt that this is the prose that won Modiano the Nobel Prize, but I suspect that it will prove a useful background to his novels, once I get around to reading them. ( )

La pròpia vida de l'autor, des d'abans del seu neixement fins el moment de la publicació de la seva primera novel.la. Més que una narració és un resum de tot el que ens vol dir, que cap detall se n'escapi però sense aprofondir en les escenes, només ens les presenta i és la nostra imaginació qui farà la resta. Però el passeig per París queda garantit, també visitem Annecy i els voltants del llac. Quan algú com Modiano et porta de la mà per llocs on has viscut, el plaer és majúscul. Podria ser l'esquema d'una gran novel.la. Malgrat tot em rendeixo al seu encant. ( )

Are you new to Modiano? Because this is tedious in the extreme: a list of names, streets, and very occasional events, which would be of interest had I read most of his other work, but having read only a few novellas before this one, is of very little interest at all. Which is to say: don't start here. Start, but don't start here. ( )

J'écris ces pages comme on rédige un constat ou un curriculum vitae, à titre documentaire et sans doute pour en finir avec une vie qui n'était pas la mienne. Les événements que j'évoquerai jusqu'à ma vingt et unième année, je les ai vécus en transparence - ce procédé qui consiste à faire défiler en arrière-plan des paysages, alors que les acteurs restent immobiles sur un plateau de studio. Je voudrais traduire cette impression que beaucoup d'autres ont ressentie avant moi : tout défilait en transparence et je ne pouvais pas encore vivre ma vie. P. M