Invisible ink: a novel

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Yale University Press
Publication Date
[2020]
Language
English

Description

Patrick Modiano explores the boundaries of recollection in a “mesmerizing, enigmatic novel” (Publishers Weekly)  “A mesmerizing, enigmatic novel. . . . A story about growing old and the gaps and omissions that make up a life. . . . Its dreamlike prose and a beguiling structural twist make it a worthy and satisfying addition to [Modiano’s] accomplished oeuvre.”—Publishers Weekly  “Nobel Prize winner Modiano’s title smartly ties together the theme, plot, and ambience of his latest book . . . The past overlaps and memories half-emerge in classic Modiano fashion, just as a message in invisible ink tentatively reveals itself in the right light.”—Library Journal   The latest work from Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, Invisible Ink is a spellbinding tale of memory and its illusions. Private detective Jean Eyben receives an assignment to locate a missing woman, the mysterious Noëlle Lefebvre. While the case proves fruitless, the clues Jean discovers along the way continue to haunt him. Three decades later, he resumes the investigation for himself, revisiting old sites and tracking down witnesses, compelled by reasons he can’t explain to follow the cold trail and discover the shocking truth once and for all.   A number one best seller in France, hailed by critics as “breathtakingly beautiful” (Les Inrockuptibles) and “refined and dazzling” (Le Journal du Dimanche), Invisible Ink is Modiano’s most thrilling and revelatory work to date.

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Contributors
Polizzotti, Mark translator
ISBN
9780300252583

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These Nobel Prize winning authors explore questions of identity, memory, and how the past influences the present. Like Modiano's insightful portraits of life in Paris in the past and present, Pamuk skillfully depicts different eras of Istanbul's history. Both write thought-provoking, sometimes romantic, books with intricate plots. -- Kaitlyn Moore
Patrick Modiano and Kazuo Ishiguro write dreamlike and thoughtful literary fiction about the fallibility of memory. Their character-driven books are moving and sometimes romantic. They both craft meticulous settings. Modiano writes most often about Paris, and Ishiguro's books are set in England and Asia. -- Kaitlyn Moore
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Published Reviews

Publisher's Weekly Review

Nobel laureate Modiano delivers a mesmerizing, enigmatic novel in the vein of many of his best-known works. Like Missing Person, the book is about a private eye--albeit a shabby and halfhearted one--who once briefly worked for the Hutte Detective Agency in Paris, and like Dora Bruder, it centers on the investigation of an unsolved disappearance. But Modiano eschews the political overtones that drove those books, telling instead a story about growing old and the gaps and omissions that make up a life. Jean Eyben looks back on his 20s, when he was assigned to investigate the disappearance of Noëlle Lefebvre. As he searched, he had a series of phantomlike encounters with people whose lives each briefly intersected with Lefebvre's in the 1960s. Her fate becomes a lifelong obsession, and Eyben recounts the story circuitously, as if remembering it as he writes, which casts an irresistible spell. As Eyben's search deepens, he wonders whether Lefebvre has some connection to his own life. All of Modiano's works are variations on a theme, and his newest is no different, but its dreamlike prose and a beguiling structural twist make it a worthy and satisfying addition to his accomplished oeuvre. (Oct.)

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Library Journal Review

Nobel Prize winner Modiano's title smartly ties together the theme, plot, and ambience of his latest book to be translated, which opens with the narrator taking a low-level job with a detective agency in Paris as background for his writing. Soon he's tasked with discovering what happened to Noëlle Lefebvre, whose disappearance may or may not be entirely innocent. Recalling the 30-year-old case in the present--and how he tried to pick it up ten years after it first surfaced--he relates trying to untangle threads leading to friends and lovers, some of whom he knows tangentially from Annecy. The past overlaps and memories half-emerge in classic Modiano fashion, just as a message in invisible ink tentatively reveals itself in the right light. The book has that foggy-night-on-the-Seine feel but ends up in Rome, where a new character articulates her need to have escaped and, somewhat unusually for Modiano, her actual pain in remembering and the desire to tie up loose ends. VERDICT Not a place to start with Modiano but a familiar pleasure for fans, again rendered excellently by Polizzotti.

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Library Journal Reviews

Nobel Prize winner Modiano's title smartly ties together the theme, plot, and ambience of his latest book to be translated, which opens with the narrator taking a low-level job with a detective agency in Paris as background for his writing. Soon he's tasked with discovering what happened to Noëlle Lefebvre, whose disappearance may or may not be entirely innocent. Recalling the 30-year-old case in the present—and how he tried to pick it up ten years after it first surfaced—he relates trying to untangle threads leading to friends and lovers, some of whom he knows tangentially from Annecy. The past overlaps and memories half-emerge in classic Modiano fashion, just as a message in invisible ink tentatively reveals itself in the right light. The book has that foggy-night-on-the-Seine feel but ends up in Rome, where a new character articulates her need to have escaped and, somewhat unusually for Modiano, her actual pain in remembering and the desire to tie up loose ends. VERDICT Not a place to start with Modiano but a familiar pleasure for fans, again rendered excellently by Polizzotti.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Nobel laureate Modiano delivers a mesmerizing, enigmatic novel in the vein of many of his best-known works. Like Missing Person, the book is about a private eye—albeit a shabby and halfhearted one—who once briefly worked for the Hutte Detective Agency in Paris, and like Dora Bruder, it centers on the investigation of an unsolved disappearance. But Modiano eschews the political overtones that drove those books, telling instead a story about growing old and the gaps and omissions that make up a life. Jean Eyben looks back on his 20s, when he was assigned to investigate the disappearance of Noëlle Lefebvre. As he searched, he had a series of phantomlike encounters with people whose lives each briefly intersected with Lefebvre's in the 1960s. Her fate becomes a lifelong obsession, and Eyben recounts the story circuitously, as if remembering it as he writes, which casts an irresistible spell. As Eyben's search deepens, he wonders whether Lefebvre has some connection to his own life. All of Modiano's works are variations on a theme, and his newest is no different, but its dreamlike prose and a beguiling structural twist make it a worthy and satisfying addition to his accomplished oeuvre. (Oct.)

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly.

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly.
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