Book Review: Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano

For my February read, I've chosen Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences, mainly to quench a growing curiosity about France's 'best kept secret' ever since he was announced as 2014's Nobel Prize winner. And as with the many books that I've picked, I was enticed by the blurbs and author endorsements on the back cover. 

Suspended Sentences is a compilation of three short novels; each can stand alone, though together the three can be a seamless read because of common elements linking them like style, theme, character quirks, and nostalgia (such that the book is almost like reading Paris in sepia). All three are similar in their tapping of seemingly dormant memories and how these continue to cast shadows into the present.

Here are my thoughts: 

1. Afterimage, the first novel, is the pursuit of an elusive photographer Francis Jansen. The narrator has volunteered to catalogue Jansen's work and in the process learns about Jansen's history and his relationships. He belatedly realises that he had met one of the subjects in Jansen's portfolio, Colette Laurent, when he was a kid; at one point, she had even sent him to pick up a parcel for her. Coincidentally, his current girlfriend resembles Colette Laurent, and perhaps this is the only reason his path ever crossed Jansen's - the photographer has asked the pair to model for him when he spotted them at a cafe.

While I enjoy reading short novels from time to time, I found Modiliano's Afterimage too short, and ending almost abruptly, i.e., when I was not ready for it to end yet. I thought this could be due to the limited length - this is at least twenty pages shorter than the other novellas I truly enjoyed, Kafka's Metamorphosis and Henry James' Daisy Miller - and perhaps because of this, there is lesser opportunity to go more in-depth into the character development.

Having said that, I was fascinated by the porous border between dreams and reality, memories and the present, which, along with questions of identity, reminds me of a Milan Kundera novel that I've read in my younger years. I was keen to get answers to some fundamental questions: who is the real Francis Jansen? If the real Francis Jansen has already died based on official records, then who is the photographer? And ultimately does it matter if the photographer's real name is Francis Jansen or not? Would he be less mysterious if he were using another name? I guess this is Modiano's point towards the end - "That evening, we had walked by his hotel....He no longer knew which man he was. ...after a certain number of years, we accept a truth that we've intuited but kept hidden from ourselves, out of carelessness or cowardice: a brother, a double died in our stead on an unknown date and in an unknown place, and his shadow ends up merging with us."

2. Suspended Sentences

In the second novel, which anchors the collection, the narrator, Patrick/Patoche (diminutive), starts out as a young boy sent, along with his younger brother, to stay temporarily with the friends of his parents in a suburb of Paris. The boys' mother, member of a theatre group, is currently touring Africa, while the father stays back in Paris but comes to visit the boys whenever he gets a day off from his job. Patoche tells about his every day life with this cast of interesting characters led by Annie who happens to be his godmother and the kids' main guardian. Later on, he reveals that they are actually a bunch of unsavoury characters but whom Patrick nonetheless remembers with tenderness, perhaps because for a time they were a constant presence in his life, while conversely his parents have been absent for a considerable amount of time. Seen through his rose-tinted lens, they are decent, gentle, and indulgent: Annie has always been dependable and genuinely cares for the boys; one of the men takes the boys for a ride in his big American car; and another dresses up as Santa on Christmas eve and gives the boys a very thoughtful present, the colourful bumper car. One would never think these members of the Rue Lauriston gang were capable of doing 'something very serious'!

Here, the sentences are short (the introduction describes them as limpid rather than simple); there is nothing in the league of Proust's whose sentences are long and luscious, and which I don't mind reading again and again, just for their utter beauty. But I guess the 'limpidness' of the sentences is justified given that the story is told from the perspective of a boy. 

This novel also seems to be stingy with imageries, but when it drops imageries, they are ones that tend to linger like "...talking in the car in the rain", or "(start of school season) the rust red color (of the leaves) that clashed with the light green of the bumper car." 

The novel uses a first person POV, which can invite some doubts with the narrator as he can be subjective and is not omniscient. Here, Patrick portrays himself as innocent and effectively clears his mother of any transgressions simply by not talking much of her, except for that side note explaining her whereabouts, though it can be tacitly deduced that if the friends are unsavoury, then it is highly likely that the parents too are of the same feathers. But then again, because this is told from a child's POV, somehow the atmosphere of innocence pervades, and one begins to accept Patoche's story at face-value

The other unique thing I've noticed about this story is its liberal use of spaces and blanks...there is a lot of suspension and many gaps are not filled up even to the very end. But perhaps that is the whole point, i.e., let space be space, and hence the title of Suspended Sentences.

3. Flowers of Ruin

Of the three, this seems to have the most imagery. The Patrick who narrates here is also now grown up, and so, fittingly the sentences are less limpid, and more complex. As with the first two novels, the third one is an attempt to pursue and deconstruct another elusive character. This time around, the character is Pacheco who has assumed the identity of someone related to nobility, and descended from a Peruvian family. Like the con artists in the second novel, Pacheco comes and goes, appearing in different incarnations each time, from a tramp, to someone who pretends to be a student of Cite Universitaire while working for an airline company (conveniently explaining his sudden absences). Towards the end, he reappears as a tour guide for a group of Japanese tourists.

The ending harks back to a Paris of bygone days. And as with the longing for that city which is and can no longer be the same, the novel ends with this bittersweet parting: "Back then, the gates of Paris were all in vanishing perspectives; the city gradually loosened its grip and faded into barren lots. And one could still believe that adventure lay right around every street corner."

While I might not be too happy with the stylistics (again only because Proust is my benchmark for French authors), I must say that the book is actively engaging. At least it forced me to make some conjectures in an attempt to fill in some of the spaces. But in the end, I just had to leave it at that, and let the space, the suspension, be part of the charm.



#BookReview #MigsReads2015 #PatrickModiano #SuspendedSentences

Popular posts from this blog

Pinto Art Museum: A Must-Visit Art Destination in Philippines

Bhutan: Windows and Doors of Bhutan (Land of Happiness)

The Lotus Pond at Gardens by the Bay