Dans le café de jeunesse perdu

Dans le café de jeunesse perdu (2007) was the first work by Modiano I ever read, which may influence my partiality for it. All the classic Modiano elements are there: the mysterious woman; the flux of identity; the inescapability of the past; the interplay of locale with story. And, of course, Modiano’s distinctive voice, blending melancholy with beauty. Four narrators reconstruct the life of an elusive young woman known as “Louki,” habitué of a café on Paris’s left bank in the 1960s leaving behind a miserable childhood in Pigalle and a loveless subsequent marriage.