In just a
fraction of a second it happens: a young man, about 20 years old, is hit by a sea-green
car at the Place des Pyramides in Paris. He is injured and immediately transported
to a hospital where he wakes up a couple of days later, not remembering what
happened exactly. A man addresses him and makes him sign a piece of paper
stating that he is not going to press charges. The next days, the young
narrator tries to figure out what happened that evening and especially who the
driver – an attractive young woman – was. Yet he confuses current and past
events since he had a similar accident when he was a boy. Ominous Monsieur
Solière seems to be the key to the memories.
A motive
which is reoccurs in Modiano’s novels is a young man roaming the streets of
Paris in search for a young woman. Here, however, it is not the one who
fascinates him and whom he fell in love with, but the driver who caused the
accident. He gathers pieces of information which do not fit together for a long
time, but finally he manages to sort out the unlucky evening. The novel
parallels the narrator’s pace at which he gets forward in his research for the
truth, at some time it slows down just to accelerate again. In this it is
typical of Modiano’s style of writing and again we get an idea of the Paris of
the 1960s which has vanished long time ago. The bars you attend to get to know people
and chat easily, the people open to talk to you. This novel differs in the way
that there is an aim of the protagonist, he is not just strolling around
searching for the sense of being, but looking for something specific, which
makes this novel stand out amongst Modiano’s long list of Paris novels.
