Yale University Press, October 27, 2015.
Four Stars
After the
Circus was originally published in French in 1992,
and is now being published in English translation, following the author’s Nobel
Prize win in 2014. I was looking forward to finally reading Modiano’s work, and
I have to say, it was pretty much what I expected. It has a very European noir
feel to it, with themes of nostalgia and memory repeating throughout the story.
The characters are well-drawn, although the main character could easily be the
city of Paris – Jean and Gisele seem to be wandering through living,
labyrinthine streets that move and shift behind them.
The atmosphere
of the novel is surreal, like being in a dream. Even though nothing unrealistic
is happening, it just feels very detached and emotionally distant. I kind of
lost the thread of Jean’s backstory halfway through, although I don’t know if
it was just me, or if the plot really did become more abstract. Either way, it
didn’t take away from the feeling of reading this book, which was made even
more dreamlike by the lost sense of reality.
Jean meets Gisele after they have been separately
interrogated by the police. Immediately, Jean is attracted to Gisele in an
almost obsessive manner. He is afraid that Gisele will disappear, so he
contrives to meet with her again, or to have her leave a mysterious suitcase at
his apartment, for which she will have to return. The minor characters that
interfere with Jean’s obsession seem to disassemble in front of him, causing
the reader to wonder if they ever existed at all. Jean wants to erase his past,
and as he tells us of one man, “[h]e was receding in time. He would go join all
the other bit players, all the poor accessories of a period in my life.” (Loc.
1107)
Because Jean is so consumed by the idea that Gisele
will disappear, her loss becomes inevitable. The scene is darkly atmospheric,
and we cannot know if the threats to their relationship are real, or if they
are evoked by the fears and expectations of the narrator. As Jean wanders
through the city, there are more questions than answers, and we never really
find out the truth about the others. Jean disassociates from himself, and he
says, “[t]he more I walked, the more it felt as if I was in a foreign city and
becoming someone else.” (Loc. 1198)
The novel is set in the 1960s, when Paris was still
rebuilding itself after WWII. The changes to the city allow both Gisele and
Jean to vanish into its uncertainties. The whole plot (or lack thereof) feels
like a metaphor for this lost generation after the war, filled with chance
encounters and the search for depth of feeling, desperate for love. There are
many unknowns, and an abrupt ending in which nothing is resolved. After this
experience, I feel like reading Modiano is definitely more about the journey
than any destination. I look forward to reading more by him, as I think his
recurring themes will add new layers to his body of work as a whole.
I received this novel from Netgalley and Yale
University Press in exchange for an honest review.
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