A private eye tries to trace a missing woman. But in what sense is she missing? And why does the case have such a hold on him, years later? Patrick Modiano’s second book since he won the Nobel in 2014 – a novel, says the cover, but novella is more like it – deals in obsession and chance, remembering and forgetting. It’s a wry and compelling tale that’s as misty and heavy with meaning as a dream; not for nothing has its author been called “the Proust of our age”. The translation is by Mark Polizzotti.
Invisible Ink (Patrick Modiano, Yale, 2021, ISBN 9780300261400, 176pp, £12.99)
NOTES
This book review was published in the May 2022 issue of France magazine.
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