Patrick Modiano: Un cirque passe (After the Circus)

The latest addition to my website is Patrick Modiano‘s Un cirque passe (After the Circus).

This novel will be familiar territory to those who have read other Modiano novels. It tells of a naive young man in Paris, whose father has to suddenly leave the country, presumably for legal reasons, who meets a woman (four years older than him). He is smitten and the couple travel round Paris in a borrowed car. She involves him with her decidedly dubious friends but agrees to accompany him to Rome where he has the possibility of a job. But who is she really and why are the police interested in her and who are her mysterious friends? We learn well before the end that it is not going to work out with her but we are left as much in the dark as our hero is.

Leave a comment