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munyapenny's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.5
chardy's review against another edition
Non ho più dato Letteratura Francese I 😃
helgamharb's review against another edition
4.0
In writing this book, I send out signals, like a lighthouse beacon in whose power to illuminate the darkness, alas, I have no faith. But I live in hope.
He comes across a heading in the third page of an old copy of the Paris-Soir newspaper, dated 31 December 1941.
It is the notice of the missing Dora Bruder, a teenager who ran away from the convent school she was staying at during the German occupation of France.
Who is Dora Bruder? Why did she run away? Would anybody remember her?
Was she ever found or did she disappear like so many other Jews who were rounded up and herded like cattle toward the slaughter house?
With the passage of time, I find perspectives become blurred, one winter merging into another. That of 1965 and that of 1942.
In this semi-biographical novel, determined to investigate and find out about Dora’s fate, our narrator follows in her and her immediate family’s footsteps, asking questions, reading letters, trying to put the divers pieces together and make the puzzle whole.
I’m writing these pages in November 1996. It seldom stops raining. Tomorrow we shall be in December, and fifty-five years will have passed since Dora ran away.
Special thanks to Michael Lund for directing me towards Modiano. Reading this book, I saw Paris from a different perspective. Not the political but the human side.
He comes across a heading in the third page of an old copy of the Paris-Soir newspaper, dated 31 December 1941.
It is the notice of the missing Dora Bruder, a teenager who ran away from the convent school she was staying at during the German occupation of France.
Who is Dora Bruder? Why did she run away? Would anybody remember her?
Was she ever found or did she disappear like so many other Jews who were rounded up and herded like cattle toward the slaughter house?
With the passage of time, I find perspectives become blurred, one winter merging into another. That of 1965 and that of 1942.
In this semi-biographical novel, determined to investigate and find out about Dora’s fate, our narrator follows in her and her immediate family’s footsteps, asking questions, reading letters, trying to put the divers pieces together and make the puzzle whole.
I’m writing these pages in November 1996. It seldom stops raining. Tomorrow we shall be in December, and fifty-five years will have passed since Dora ran away.
Special thanks to Michael Lund for directing me towards Modiano. Reading this book, I saw Paris from a different perspective. Not the political but the human side.
lolapasteque's review against another edition
5.0
Ce livre est, selon moi, un des meilleurs Modiano car il comporte plusieurs de ses grands thèmes : l'enfance, la paternité, le rôle considérable de la ville, ici Paris, les passages à caractère autobiographique et surtout l'Occupation. La progression du livre est typique de Modiano : un avis de recherche sur un bout de journal et hop ! c'est parti ! Une enquête se lance, des hypothèses s'établissent, et enfin tout cela mêle des personnages et des époques. Ce livre est bien plus qu'une séries de rêves éveillés sur une jeune fille juive. En effet on ressent un sentiment de culpabilité, un écrivain sans doute blessé devant les actes antisémites et peut-être même un désir de vengeance qui en devient alors ici un acte. C'est troublant et fascinant de lire des détails infimes sur cette période que l'auteur n'a pas connu. Il nous présente, en fait, une temporalité complexe qui caractérise également son oeuvre.
Dora Bruder est un exemple pour le devoir de mémoire car ce livre donne à des inconnus (Dora Bruder, etc...) une grande importance.
De plus, le style de Modiano est bien là , simple et d'une grande clarté. Mais aussi mystérieux et plein de secrets.
Un livre idéal pour aborder la lecture des livres de cet auteur.
Dora Bruder est un exemple pour le devoir de mémoire car ce livre donne à des inconnus (Dora Bruder, etc...) une grande importance.
De plus, le style de Modiano est bien là , simple et d'une grande clarté. Mais aussi mystérieux et plein de secrets.
Un livre idéal pour aborder la lecture des livres de cet auteur.
casparb's review
first modiano, much appreciated. Picking through a narrow history in Sebaldian fashion, dipping into the maelstrom. Collapse of memory not in the bitter term psychogeography but thru urban collapse & replacement, post-war smearing. will get 2 more
heylook's review
2.0
Useless. This guy's writing has to be better than this if he won a Nobel Prize. This is a bunch of speculation about the life of someone whose name the author saw in an old newspaper. Yet somehow he manages to make the entire thing narcissistic as hell.