Out of the Dark

by Patrick Modiano

Book Overview

Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the author of more than thirty books and one of France's most admired contemporary novelists. Out of the Dark is a moody, expertly rendered tale of a love affair between two drifters. The narrator, writing in 1995, looks back thirty years to a time when, having abandoned his studies and selling off old art books to get by, he comes to know G rard Van Bever and Jacqueline, a young, enigmatic...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080328229X
• ISBN13: 9780803282292
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Bison
• Length: 139 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A dark and comical novel that is hard to forget.

Like most European students (in movies and novels, anyway), the narrator seldom studies anything, preferring to associate with a fascinating, maybe fatal, woman and her shady boyfriend. He has a hard time figuring out what the pair are up to, and his mystery is thus ours. Fundamentally, this descends from the ancient romances of inscrutable, enchanting women, with the city replacing the forest as setting; but it recalls more immediately French black-and-white films of the 50s like "Diabolique." You can read it as a mystery story or a subtly artful narrative reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet's. It's hard to believe so witty and verbally charming a novel could be a translation.