"Back then, the gates of Paris where 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."

In these three novellas, Patrick Modiano's writing is all about the elusive past. He paints a picture of Paris in the aura of nostalgia, like in a black-and-white art film of the past. We're reminded time after time that the nooks and crannies being described no longer exist, lost to time.

“The world to which these people belonged revived some memories from childhood: it was my father’s world...... I rescue them from the void one final time before they sink back into it forever.”

Modiano's father is a recurring theme in all these stories as they have a vague connection with the Occupation era. His father had refused to wear the Yellow badge and did not turn himself in when Paris Jews were rounded up for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. He was picked up in February 1942, and narrowly missed being deported, after an intervention from a friend. During the war years Albert Modiano did business on the black market, hanging around with the Carlingue, the French Gestapo auxiliaries (mentioned in the text as the "Rue Lauriston gang"). Its leaders were recruited from the underworld. Albert never clearly spoke of this period to his son before his death in 1977.

Modiano's narrators are each inexplicably drawn towards characters with vague pasts. There is a fog building up in these memories, a mystery that time never managed to touch. Each character and their histories form the musings of these narrators, and the central themes of each of these novellas.

Afterimage (French: Chien de printemps; published 1993)

In Afterimage we find the narrator reminiscing the days he spent in the company of a tactful introvert photographer by the name of Jansen. The story describes Jansen's eccentricities and describes the characters in his life and muses on the blanks in his past that the narrator strives to fill in.

Suspended Sentences (French: Remise de peine; published 1988)

The story of two brothers living together among a family of strangers who take care of the children as their parents are on tour elsewhere. The semi-autobiographical novel seems to borrow themes from Modiano's personal conversations with his father as a child. The characters mentioned in the novel that surround the two children all have vague, mysterious personalities and elusive pasts.

Flowers of Ruin (French: Fleurs de ruine; published 1991)

"April 24, 1933. A young married couple commits suicide for no apparent reason.
It’s a very strange story that occurred that night in the building at number 26 Rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, near the Pantheon, in the home of Mr. and Mme T."

New story, new narrator. New obsessions. We now take a dip into the world of an unusual murder-suicide. A tragic orgy, and the characters that may or may not be related to the incident. As the inconclusive details stop, our narrator finds a new obsession: an enigmatic character by the name of Pacheco, whose true identity seems to be getting more elusive with each sentence.

Who really is Pacheco? Well, you've got to read to find out!