Patrick ModianoDora Bruder

I really wanted to quote the final paragraph of Modiano's novel, which is infinitely more moving in its simplicity than anything that comes before. But I will desist, and leave it for the reader to discover -- not because it gives away secrets, but because it does the opposite, preserving a secret for all time. It is the one gift he can offer to the tragic subject of his writing, a teenage Jewish girl living in Paris at the time of the German Occupation.So failing that, let me come upon it obliquely, as Modiano himself does. Near the beginning of his book, the author recalls visiting the hospital of the Salpêtrière in search of his ailing father, whom he had not seen for many years:"I remember having wandered for hours through the immensity of this vast hospital, looking for him. I went into ancient buildings, passed through wards lined with beds, and questioned nurses who gave me contradictory information. I ended almost doubting my father's very existence as I walked back and forth in front of that majestic church and those unreal buildings, unchanged since the 18th century. They made me think of Manon Lescaut and the time when they served as a prison for prostitutes, under the sinister name of General Hospital, before they were deported to Louisiana. I must have pounded those paved courtyards until dusk. I never saw my father again." [translation mine]This is paragraph has nothing to do with Modiano's main subject, which is to trace the last months of this girl before her eventual capture. And yet it has everything to do with his motivation and method. It could be said that his entire oeuvre has to do with the search for his father and his failure to find him -- or at least to understand how he could have survived the Occupation as a Jew, unless as a black-marketeer and collaborator with the Germans. His method of inserting himself into the settings of his story, his precise accumulation of detail, his command of the parallels with history and literature, make him into an archaeologist of shame, very much in the manner of WG Sebald, though with documents in place of photographs. The one exception is the winter scene on the cover which sums up the desolate atmosphere of the book in a single shot.*Like his Prix Goncourt novel,  RUE DES BOUTIQUES OBSCURES , but unlike his recently translated trilogy  SUSPENDED SENTENCES , I read this in French, and feel it was absolutely essential to do so. Not for Modiano's style, which is direct rather than literary in tone, but the number of original documents he uncovers, whose untranslatable bureaucratic language treats the management of horror as a day's normal business. Modiano's trigger is a mention in a 1941 newspaper that a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Dora Bruder has disappeared. The author knows the area in which her family lived, and revisits the once-familiar streets to soak in the atmosphere. I read with Google Maps zoomed in to various areas of Paris, walking vicariously through the unfamiliar quarters, imagining how they must have felt in 1941. What intrigues him is that Dora's disappearance does not coincide with the round-ups of French Jews, which did not begin until later the following year. So why did she vanish?Indefatigably, he looks through records, searching for information. And remarkably, he finds a lot. Unlike the other four Modiano books I have read, which work obliquely by mystery and suggestion, this one is almost full-frontal. There is no question what ultimately happened to Dora Bruder, and the details make painful reading. Fact after fact after fact, not revealed in order, but squeezing Dora's life between them as in a slowly closing trap. Soon, there are no secrets left. Except one -- and that is the stroke of poetry that turns this painstaking history into a work of art.[*I will give more information on this and a couple of other matters in the comments.]

I had not heard of, nor read the work of, Patrick Modiano before the announcement of his Nobel Prize for Literature. Curiosity ensued. My first encounter has been with this curious book (both an odd work and one that explores deeply the nature of human curiosity), a cross between novella and brief, focused memoir. The voice of the narrator lets us know early that a determined search for information about the fate of a young woman, Dora Bruder, identified as being "missing" from her school in Paris, according to a notice posted by her parents in Paris-Soir on December 31, 1941 is to follow. Indeed, the narrative persists in a search through printed records, possible eyewitness sources and whatever else may reveal or bring to light the situation and circumstances of Dora's life after her flight from her school. Early in the work, the narrator states: "Il faut longtemps pour que resurgisse a la lumiere ce qui a ete efface. Des traces subsistent dans des registres et l'on ignore ou ils sont caches et quels gardiens veillent sur eux te si ces gardiens consentiront a vous les montrer. Ou peut-etre ont-ils oublie tout simplement que ces registres existaientt" And he concludes the thought with what might be the governing idea or at least a guiding motto for this narrative, "Il suffit d'un peu de patience." (Please excuse the absence of the proper diacritical marks.)The narrator mixes details of his own life, both his youth and his recent history, with the details he uncovers and discovers from the various sources about the life (and death) of Dora and, for that matter, of both of her parents and vast numbers of others rounded up and deported to death camps by the occupying Germans.This powerful exploration of, one might also say meditation upon, the possibilities of ever knowing with certainty what has happened to others, especially in the past, as well as whether what one remembers about oneself is real or accurate, and whether or how one may interpret the "evidence" of photographs, printed records, identity papers, etc., appears to be one of the recurrent themes of Modiano's fiction. It is, perhaps, most precisely focused here (though I will have to read much more of his work to feel confident of this) because he has chosen a specific person who is not personally known to him, but whose fate he nonetheless wishes to establish. In the process, he recovers information about a number of other persons, also deported or otherwise destroyed by the "univers de boucherie et d'apocalypse" that was the European experience during the Second World War.The narrator reflects on the art of fiction and the use, in classic novels, of coincidence, of the possibility of a kind of prophetic clairvoyance arising in a novelist who expends intense imaginative concentration on events--possibly actual events, possibly those only imagined: "cela fait simplement partie du metier: les efforts d'imagination, necessaires a ce metier, le besoin de fixer son esprit sur des points de detail--et cela de maniere obsessionnelle -- pour ne pas perdre le fil et se laisser a aller a sa paresse -- toute cette tension, cette gymnastique cerebrale peut sans doute provoquer a la longue de breves intuitions "concernant des evenements passes ou futurs" (p. 53). And that is a pretty good description of the narrative procedure of Dora Bruder. It is a fascinating sojourn with the mind of a master detective, a profoundly intuitive and ratiocinative mind, devoted to exploring the nature of human experience in times of extremity. The very nature of human identity--challenged by fear and oppression, forced into disguise and self-denial in the face of threats, transforming the self from a familiar to an alien entity while retaining some degree of consciousness of the necessary deception and the underlying truth--all these are aspects of Modiano's narrative, and all contribute to the emotional and intellectual impact of this wonderful work.

This is a fascinating period in French History which is important to understand the consequences of ordinary events in those awful times. Modiano takes a simple missing persons announcement to trace the disappearance of a rebellious teenager from boarding school. He jumps back and forth in time to the influx of Jews to France at the time of Russian Pograms, the liberal policies of the Bloom years, Nazi occupation and the aggressive round-up of Jews in Vichy to modern times to reflect on the events of Dora Bruder's disappearance. Modiano uses a newspaper style to convey the horrors of the time. It is this non emotional style that alerts the reader to how chilling these ordinary events could be. A must read to understand the disruptted lives that war brings.

an absolutely beautifully written book.It hauntingI am reading again while listening to the excellent recording done by DIDIER SANDRE, which brings out the hypnotic beauty of the language

Excellent and well written bookEasy to read, clear enough to understand, nice cover.Recommend it highly.

What a great sad biographic piece of literature. Modiano captured what it meant to be young, female, Jewish & trapped in occupied France.

the book is well written and inspiring.

New book. Prompt shipping.

In more of a notebook than a novel, Patrick Modiano develops a partial trace history of the arrest and deportation of Dora Bruder in Nazi occupied Paris. He documents detailed data, but has to rely on surmise to fill in large gaps in her story. Nevertheless, this banality conveys the pervasive everyday nature of the evil unleashed by the Nazi regime with French collaboration in this sector of its Holocaust. For too long France suppressed its role in the persecution and murder of its Jewish citizens. A more comprehensive account with more data and personal stories is needed.

Si vous ne devez en lire qu’un, choisissez celui-là. Le plus poignant, le plus fort de toute l’œuvre de Patrick Modiano. A partir d’une petite annonce trouvée dans un Paris-Soir de 1941, l’écrivain se lance sur les traces d’une jeune fille juive, une fugueuse disparue dans la nuit noire de l’Occupation. A travers cette enquête, Modiano cherche Dora, mais aussi son propre père, qui se cachait également dans le Paris de cette époque. Absolument magnifique, même s’il ne s’agit pas d’un roman.

It made me so grateful that I did bot have to live through the first half of the Twentieth century. I was glad to get an unbigoted portrayal of Jewish life in France during a a torrid period and as the author says, France should be proud of having taken in so many Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and tried to help them become good citizens. Why has France failed so much with its own African and Arabic colonies?

Bought this under the impression it was in English, turned out to be in French.Have had another go at getting the English version so may use both versionsto improve my French.My point is that there should be greater clarity about the language the edition is in.

A haunting book that builds an empathy with this quite modern, possibly troubled, girl without ever really knowing her. Suddenly this did not happen in the past but is almost contemporary. Modern's simple narrative is deceptive in its ease. Whilst one is shocked to walk around Paris and see the plaques to this terrible episode in France's history this books attempts to bring some substance to just one person and in doing so gives human dimension to the others.