In the Café of Lost Youth, by Patrick Modiano

In the 1956 Jean-Pierre Melville film "Bob le Flambeur," there's a scene of the early morning streets of Paris. Bob has been out all night and emerges into the daylight, confronted by the morning newspaper deliveries and the trucks spraying water to clean the streets. I've always loved that scene in the film, and when I imagine Paris, it's often that Paris that I imagine. That Paris is the world of In the Café of Lost Youth. (I almost wrote that Paris is the world of Modiano, but having only read three of his books, I don't feel I have quite the authority to speak on that.)

In the Café of Lost Youth is about a troubled young woman, nicknamed Louki. We learn about her in glimpses through the eyes of different narrators, a young man who has seen her at a café they both frequent, a private investigator her husband has hired to track her down, herself, and her lover. As a girl she started sneaking out in the night and walking the streets of Paris. Eventually, she never goes back home. She is probably still a teenager when she starts frequenting all-night cafés, drinking with older men. She develops a fascination with science fiction, and then perhaps with the occult. Even when we hear her own voice telling us her story, it's defined more by what it doesn't tell than what it does. She remains a mystery, to those who knew her, to the reader.

I'm sure I've said this every time I've written about a Modiano book, but the mood of his books goes right to my core. It's this beautiful nostalgia, with an interplay of present observations of a remote past. The books are as much about memory itself as they are about the events they describe in the past. (At least this book didn't mention the Place Malesherbes!) 

I kept coming back in my mind to "Bob le Flambeur" while reading In the Café of Lost Youth. It takes place in the same neighborhoods (I should say arrondissements). Cafés from the movie show up in the book. And Louki. I couldn't not imagine her as the teenage Isabelle Corey — Anne in the film. This book was written in 2007. Maybe Modiano was imagining her too.