When the Nobel committee announced that the literary prize was being awarded to Patrick Modiano I discovered that many of my well-read friends had never heard of the author. I myself had only read one of Modiano’s novels, and that one in French. Now I have read a half-dozen titles and am beginning to understand the author.
In a review of The Occupation Trilogy, the New York Times wrote:
Joe Leaphorn leans back in his office chair and stares at the seemingly random colored pins adorning the map on the wall. Hercule Poirot charges up his little gray cells with a tisane and a swirl of his mustache. But the detective I most admire hulks around, watches, listens, applies his methods, and has an occasional ragoût at the local bistro. Yes, it is Jules Maigret, commissioner of the Paris “Brigade Criminelle” (commissaire – Direction Régionale de Police Judiciaire de Paris).
Continue reading “Oh Those Methods!”
Marguerite Duras ends her memoirs of the aftermath to World War II with a story she wrote back then (subsequently revised) called Aurelia Paris. It’s very short but powerful. The scene is an apartment where a older woman has assumed the care of a young girl after the girl’s parents were taken by the German police. The woman sits outside the door with a pistol, expecting to kill the German police when they come and then turn the gun on the girl and herself to guarantee that they will not be captured.
At the same time, they are in the flightpath of the heavy bombers heading for Berlin and half-expect to be blown up every time they hear the roar of the planes’ engines. The girl is attuned to the sound of the planes and can report their positions across the map of Europe.
A simple story but, as I said, powerful.
The entire collection titled The War is a vivid recollection of the horrors and the intense human emotions that came with the war. A very important work and highly recommended.
A Celebration of Reading 