Evoking Alain Robbe Grillet Quotes

Exhibition dates: 4th November 2016 – 26th February 2017 I seem to have a bit of a thing for film and photography at the moment! More delicious film fascination, this time for the still camera.

German Expressionism, film noir, science-fiction, horror, murder and mayhem – photographers using all manner of artistic techniques to get their message across. Now often found in fine art auction houses. I love the heading “Intermediality and Self-Reflexivity” “intermediate images” that unite aspects of both media (film and photography) and self-reflexive images that take on a life of their own, developing “a filmic work further in an independent manner, thereby allowing it to be regarded from new perspectives. Such stills often contain self-reflexive commentary on the work’s specifically “filmic” aspects.” Sensitive, sensual, snapshot; stars and auteurism; murder and mayhem; avant-garde, beauty and sex – it has it all. Look at the amazing colours in Horst von Harbou’s stills for Metropolis (1927) which were produced as transparent foils and elaborately coloured by hand. Never heard of such a thing before, coloured transparent foils.. Many thankx to the Albertina for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Anonymous La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc 1927 Karl Theodor Dreyer (director) Carl Theodor Dreyer (3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968), commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema. His best known films include The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (1955), and Gertrud (1964) As a young man, Dreyer worked as a journalist, but he eventually joined the film industry as a writer of title cards for silent films and subsequently of screenplays. He was initially hired by Nordisk Film in 1913.

La gran belleza, un homenaje a modo de secuela de madurez Alain Robbe-Grillet. Start studying Literary Terms and Examples Period 5. Alain Robbe-Grillet. Living in his life with her and evoking alternately the two images in.

His first attempts at film direction had limited success, and he left Denmark to work in the French film industry. While living in France he met Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo and other members of the French artistic scene and in 1928 he made his first classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Working from the transcripts of Joan’s trial, he created a masterpiece of emotion that drew equally on realism and expressionism. Text from the.

Modiano has a melancholic bent whose sentences vibrate (“like a spider’s web”) with a kind of menace. We are never really sure who deserves the most scrutiny amongst his characters, but everyone in this novel seems to be hiding some dark past or grim present. Even the dog, a Great Dane, was “congenitally afflicted with sadness and the ennui of life.” In Modiano's lavish description of the locale, a fashionable small French resort across a lake from Switzerland, even the trees are a mystery: 'The Modiano has a melancholic bent whose sentences vibrate (“like a spider’s web”) with a kind of menace. We are never really sure who deserves the most scrutiny amongst his characters, but everyone in this novel seems to be hiding some dark past or grim present. Even the dog, a Great Dane, was “congenitally afflicted with sadness and the ennui of life.” In Modiano's lavish description of the locale, a fashionable small French resort across a lake from Switzerland, even the trees are a mystery: 'The vegetation here is thoroughly mixed, it’s hard to tell if you’re in the Alps, on the shores of the Mediterranean, or somewhere in the tropics. Umbrella pines. If you take the boulevard up the hillside, you discover the panorama: the entire lake, the Aravis mountains, and across the water, the elusive country known as Switzerland.'

Why “elusive”? We never learn why. “I didn’t yet know that Switzerland doesn’t exist.” Perhaps it is the notion of safety that doesn’t exist. A nineteen-year-old is not expected to know that, not then, not now. Modiano liberally salts his work with phrases that fill us with an unnameable dread. Count Victor is no more Count than you or I, but somehow we’d rather believe that than whatever it is he is running from.

He is the son of Russian Jews, and the Second World War is over at least fifteen years. He is wealthy beyond imagining, but he has fear: he’s “scared to death” he tells us early on as he recounts the time he met Yvonne and Meinthe. ”When I think of her today, that’s the image that comes back to me most often. Her smile and her red hair. The black-and-white dog beside her. The beige Dodge. And Meinthe, barely visible behind the windshield.

And the switched-on headlights. And the rays of the sun.”Modiano writes like a painter paints. He weaves sound and scent along with color and emotion, light and dark. ”We returned through a part of the garden I wasn’t familiar with.

The gravel paths were rectilinear, the lawns symmetrical and laid out in picturesque English style. Around each of them were flamboyant beds of begonias or geraniums. And here as well, there was the soft, reassuring whisper of the sprinklers. I thought about the Tuileries of my childhood. Meinthe proposed that we have a drinkIn the end, the three of them, The Count, Yvonne, and Meinthe make quite a hit in that town at that time.

Photographs show them glamorous and solemn, walking arm-in-arm beside the dog, Meinthe taking up the rear. Meinthe and Yvonne win the coveted Houligant Cup for that year and are sought-after companions for their edgy stylishness. Gradually Meinthe and Yvonne share pieces of their shadowy background with Victor, and the glamour, he realizes, is all rhinestones and rust. “The rooms in 'palaces' fool you at first, but pretty soon their dreary walls and furniture begin to exude the same sadness as the accommodations in shady hotels. Insipid luxury; sickly sweet smell in the corridors, which I can’t identify but must be the very odor of anxiety, of instability, of exile, of phoniness.”When “France suddenly seemed to [Victor] too narrow a territory,” he proposed they ditch the local act and take to the road, somewhere where they could show their true capabilitiesAmerica. Later, when it is all over, we think that perhaps Victor’s fear stems from his youth, his aloneness, his uncertainty. He grew up that summer by the lake, and saw most of what there was to see.

Later, when he ambles under the arcades on the Rue de Castiglione reading a newspaper, his education comes full circle, and the mystery begins again. Promotional copy for Villa Triste, due out today in a new translation by John Cullen and published by, calls it Modiano’s most accessible novel.

It may well be, but all Modiano’s great themes are present. This fine translation does justice to the underlying greatness of the work.

A fine piece of literature that can keep you mulling events over in your head for a long time to come. 'Υπάρχουν μυστηριώδη πλάσματα -τα ίδια πάντοτε- που στέκονται φρουροί σε κάθε σταυροδρόμι της ζωής μας' Ένα τέτοιο σταυροδρόμι προσπαθεί να θυμηθεί ο αφηγητής καθώς περπατάει σε μια λουτρόπολη της Γαλλίας, κοντά στα ελβετικά σύνορα, κ θυμάται έναν μεγάλο έρωτα που έζησε στις αρχές των 60s (από όσα αναφέρει φαίνεται ότι πρόκειται για το 1962). Είναι το πιο παλιό του βιβλίο από όσα έχω διαβάσει κ το καλύτερο μετά τις Κυριακές του Αυγούστου που είναι με διαφορά το αγαπημένο μου απ'τα τέσσερα που έχω 'Υπάρχουν μυστηριώδη πλάσματα -τα ίδια πάντοτε- που στέκονται φρουροί σε κάθε σταυροδρόμι της ζωής μας' Ένα τέτοιο σταυροδρόμι προσπαθεί να θυμηθεί ο αφηγητής καθώς περπατάει σε μια λουτρόπολη της Γαλλίας, κοντά στα ελβετικά σύνορα, κ θυμάται έναν μεγάλο έρωτα που έζησε στις αρχές των 60s (από όσα αναφέρει φαίνεται ότι πρόκειται για το 1962). Είναι το πιο παλιό του βιβλίο από όσα έχω διαβάσει κ το καλύτερο μετά τις Κυριακές του Αυγούστου που είναι με διαφορά το αγαπημένο μου απ'τα τέσσερα που έχω διαβάσει μέχρι στιγμής. Όπως κ στα υπόλοιπα, ο Modiano γράφει κομψά κ λεπτεπίλεπτα με κύριο θέμα τον αγώνα των ανθρώπων να διατηρήσουν τις αναμνήσεις τους όσο πιο καθαρές γίνεται. Η μοναδική ίσως διαφορά απ'τις υπόλοιπες κ παρόμοιες προσπάθειες του είναι ότι εδώ δεν προσπαθεί μόνο να θυμηθεί το παρελθόν του αλλά κ να φανταστεί όσα δεν ρώτησε τότε ή δεν κατάφερει να μάθει αργότερα.

Ερωτευμένος με την πανέμορφη Υβόννη κ παρέα με τον gay φίλο της, τον γιατρό Ρενέ Μεντ περιφέρονται στα ακριβά μαγαζιά της πόλης, κοιμούνται σε χλιδάτα ξενοδοχεία, συμμετέχουν σε ανούσιους διαγωνισμούς κομψότητας (που κερδίζει φυσικά η Υβόννη) κ κυλιούνται -στην κυριολεξία- στα πατώματα της βίλας του Μεντ (ο οποίος την έχει ονομάσει Βίλα Θλίψη,όπως θα έπρεπε να είναι κ ο τίτλος του βιβλίου. Αυτές είναι κ οι καλύτερες σελίδες που θα βρείτε εδώ). Ο συγγραφέας δεν στηρίζεται στην πλοκή, ούτε καν στην ανάπτυξη των χαρακτήρων, κυρίως γιατί δεν μπορεί κανείς να είναι σίγουρος αν θυμάται καλά τους ανθρώπους που έπαιξαν κάποιο ρόλο στο παρελθόν του. Ο τόπος της ιστορίας είναι ο κύριος πρωταγωνιστής (με ότι αυτό σημαίνει,τα σπίτια,τα πάρκα,τα αυτοκίνητα,τις ταπετσαρίες κτλ.) κ η γραφή του Modiano η κύρια γοητεία του βιβλίου. 'Ένα από τα παράθυρα ήταν μισάνοιχτο και άκουγα το θρόισμα απ'τα φυλλώματα κάποιου δέντρου που χάιδευαν το τζάμι. Η σκιά τους σκέπαζε τη βιβλιοθήκη σαν ένα κιγκλίδωμα φιταγμένο από τη νύχτα κ το φεγγάρι'.

Πίσω από ένα τέτοιο τζάμι, θολό ή γεμάτο σκιές από παλιές εικόνες, γράφεται ολόκληρο το βιβλίο. Απ'την μέχρι τώρα εμπειρία μου, είναι το πιο ευκολοδιάβαστο βιβλίο του κ αυτό που θα πρότεινα σε κάποιον που θέλει να δοκιμάσει τον Modiano κ τον τρόπο που γράφει. Οι κινήσεις μας ήταν πολύ αργές κι όταν μετακινιόμασταν, αυτό γινόταν χωρίς βιασύνη. Μια απότομη κίνηση θα είχε καταστρέψει τη γοητεία. Μιλούσαμε χαμηλόφωνα [.] Ένας ποδηλάτης περνούσε κι άκουγα το τρίξιμο του ποδηλάτου για λίγα λεπτά. Κι εκείνος άλλωστε προχωρούσε αργά αργά. Όλα επιπλέανε γύρω μας.

Ούτε καν ανάβαμε το φως όταν έπεφτε η νύχτα [.] Να μη βγούμε ποτέ απ'αυτή τη βίλα. Να μην εγκαταλείψουμε αυτό το δωμάτιο. Να μείνουμε ξαπλωμένοι στον καναπέ ή καταγής, όπως κάναμε όλο και πιο συχνά. Ένιωθα κατάπληξη να ανακαλύπτω στην Υβόννη τέτοια ικανότητα για αυτοεγκατάλειψη.

Για μένα αυτό είχε σχέση με την απέχθεια που αισθανόμουν για την κίνηση, με την ανησυχία που μου προκαλούσε οτιδήποτε κοθνιέται,περνάει κ αλλάζει [.] Γι'αυτή όμως; Νομίζω πως πολύ απλά ήταν τεμπέλα. Summer of 1962. A small French resort on the shores of a lake, not far from the Swiss border.

A quiet little place, forgotten by all except its inhabitants and the smattering of guests it receives during the holidays. An 18-year-old young man arrives in town, with a fake name and a made-up past. What transpires over the next few months is the subject of this strange little novel, which somehow put me in mind of the two Alains - Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes (the book) as well as Alain Robbe Summer of 1962. A small French resort on the shores of a lake, not far from the Swiss border.

A quiet little place, forgotten by all except its inhabitants and the smattering of guests it receives during the holidays. An 18-year-old young man arrives in town, with a fake name and a made-up past. What transpires over the next few months is the subject of this strange little novel, which somehow put me in mind of the two Alains - Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes (the book) as well as Alain Robbe-Grillet's L'Immortelle (the movie). If what the press says of Patrick Modiano's work is true - memories, mostly, of the Nazi occupation of Paris - then this book is probably atypical. Certainly the plot, such as it is, is far removed from the capital, unfolding entirely within the bounds of this nameless town which apparently was modelled on the real-life resort of Annecy where Modiano spent a few years of his youth. But back to the story. The young man stays at first in a hotel inhabited mainly by middle-aged summertime regulars, but soon he falls in with a mysterious pair - the beautiful Yvonne and the fastidious, slightly menacing Meinthe.

He introduces himself as Count Victor Chmara, of exiled Russian aristocratic stock, which he freely admits to the reader is a lie. Rather, there are a handful of hints sprinkled here and there that conceal as much as they reveal: a father who had business in Brazzaville; hiding from the Germans during the occupation; a fleeting mention of Nansen passports. 'Victor', it seems, was raised by his grandmother in a quiet Parisian neighbourhood. The reason he's fled to this borderland is because something about the situation in Paris makes him very nervous, very fearful.

The Algerian war is raging in the background. Does he want to avoid conscription?

Or has he been the victim of anti-Semitism? Not a lot happens over the course of the next hundred pages. Victor and Yvonne become lovers, he moves into her suite at the Hermitage hotel.

They go for the usual whirl: long walks and drives, boat rides, dinners, parties. They lounge around endlessly in the hotel room. There is an extended description of a fashion contest for couples called the Houligant Cup, which is won by Yvonne and Meinthe.

This is the world of the European haute-bourgeoisie at play - a world of shimmering sunshine, elegant dresses, brittle laughter. If you don't have to look up what a shantung suit is, or a cheval-glass, or a haircut en brosse, you are probably at home in this world. Later however we get a glimpse of the other side. Yvonne and Meinthe grew up in this town, both burning with a desire to escape its narrow confines. Her background is provincial-proletarian; her uncle who now runs the family's garage business invites Yvonne and Victor over for dinner, an evening far removed from the fancy goings-on at the Hermitage or the Alhambra. The affair won't last, of course. But what will happen to the protagonists?

Twelve years later, Victor will look back at that long-ago summer and his lost friends. Yvonne is a world-famous actress now; the homosexual Meinthe who may have been involved with the clandestine services in relation to the Algerian war, commits suicide one day by turning on the gas in his house. * An extended act of remembrance - that's how I thought of Modiano's novel. The pace is unhurried, meditative; more than telling a story, he is evoking a milieu, a certain ambience. Refracted through the thick glass of memory. There is that languid air of unknowing, so redolent of French literature and cinema of that era. Part mystery, part tedium.

And yet by the end of the book, I was completely in its grip, its perverse slowness, the fate of its characters. I wonder if he wrote a sequel. This felt nicely familiar to me, the characters felt familiar, like that particular friendship threesome is a classic trope maybe, i'm thinking of The Dreamers but with less fixation on bodily-functions.

This was quite a slight novel in some ways, but i loved it, i'm a whore for nostalgia, and the French do nostalgia so well, Modiano is right up my street. This novel was lovely but also incredibly sad. Not because of anything that happens in it especially, just because it is about the fleetingn This felt nicely familiar to me, the characters felt familiar, like that particular friendship threesome is a classic trope maybe, i'm thinking of The Dreamers but with less fixation on bodily-functions.

This was quite a slight novel in some ways, but i loved it, i'm a whore for nostalgia, and the French do nostalgia so well, Modiano is right up my street. This novel was lovely but also incredibly sad. Not because of anything that happens in it especially, just because it is about the fleetingness of things, of youth, and how the small things you remember, like a half-heard piece of music or the way the light hits something a particular way, take on all this weight and are kind of overwhelming over time.

Three characters meet in the 60’s in a small French town located on a lake across from Switzerland, and everyone seems to be living in the past. Victor, the main protagonist, and Yvonne, an actress, (although they all appear to be acting) and Dr. Menthe we learn his father was a martyr of the French Resistance.

The description of the hotels and cafes in this small town, as well as the automobiles, the way the people dress, it all appears more like the ’40’s when there was danger from the Occupa Three characters meet in the 60’s in a small French town located on a lake across from Switzerland, and everyone seems to be living in the past. Victor, the main protagonist, and Yvonne, an actress, (although they all appear to be acting) and Dr. Menthe we learn his father was a martyr of the French Resistance. The description of the hotels and cafes in this small town, as well as the automobiles, the way the people dress, it all appears more like the ’40’s when there was danger from the Occupation. Time has stood still.

Danger from war is one subject Victor refers to often. Using a false identity, he is not Victor, much less a Count, as he claims. Everyone just keeps living and lying - perhaps much as it was during the German Occupation in the 40’s. Not much has changed, with the exception of the presence of the Occupation, there is no danger anymore, or is there?...

So stop the pretending and get on with the present and the future! But Victor lives in the past. He holds on to mementos from the past - material or mental, he holds on. He cannot free himself and lives with anxiety and fear, yet thoroughly enjoying the company of Yvonne and the lifestyle she and Dr. Meinth have in this small town. If this review sounds a bit confusing, well that is how I found this book!

Confusing at times, but I still felt compelled to finish this true work of art, this beautifully written piece of literature. Melancholy sucked me in from the beginning with a Great Dane dog that also appears to be acting!, to each of the characters, who seem to be suspended in time, slow moving, who they are past and present, what are they doing in this small town, are all pieces of a puzzle that need to be assembled. Bit by bit, Victor randomly gives information along the way, but never enough to build the complete picture for me. Why did I bother to finish reading this book?

I felt if I kept reading, it would all come together and make perfect sense. The methodic storytelling captured my curiosity, as the style of writing is dream like.

Surely I would eventually comprehend the story fully, the characters purpose and connection to one another, their past, their present. But it was not meant to be. I did connect a few of the dots to this puzzle, but mostly speculation, as the author confirms very little for me. Even in the end, right up to the last sentences the author plays with my curiosity. A suitcase left behind at the train station - why? I'm curious as to what was inside and I question the symbolic meaning the author had in this action.

Sadly, I need a college professor to help me decipher it all! Confusing yet compelling, not a book for everyone - 4 stars for the compelling nature that kept me reading - 3 stars for the story line as I could not get the pieces to come together and satisfy my curiosity. About the Author A little research online helps me better understand this author which helps me confirm some of my thoughts about this book. Apparently all of his works are of similar themes. His novels delve into the puzzle of identity, and of trying to track evidence of existence through the traces of the past. 'Obsessed with the troubled and shameful period of the Occupation—during which his father had allegedly engaged in shady dealings—Modiano returns to this theme in all of his novels, book after book building a remarkably homogeneous work.

'After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all away,' he says. Winfunktion Mathematik Plus 1920s. 'But I know I'll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things that are part of what I am. In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born.' He writes constantly about the city of Paris, describing the evolution of its streets, its habits and its people.'

- My thoughts on a few lines from the book; Page 137 Victor’s identity becomes clear? 'The rooms in the 'palaces' fool you at first, but pretty soon their dreary walls and furniture begin to exude the same sadness as the accommodations and shady hotels. Insipid luxury; sickly-sweet smell in the corridors which I can't identify but must be the very odor of anxiety, of instability, of exile, of phoniness.

A smell that has always accompanied me”. -My interpretationVictor in his youth, along with his family, were hunted by the Nazis, constantly on the run, changing identities, hiding out in different 'palaces' and it haunts him for a lifetime? He reveals that he never lived in one place, he shares he has anxiety and talks of exile, feeling he does not belong anywhere, yearning to have lived in the small French town like that of Yvonne and Menthe, who seemed to have experienced an idyllic life growing up there.

Victor feels like a man, a race, without a country - I could speculate for days on just this paragraph! Early on you learn Victor is Jewish, passing himself as a Count, a fake persona, perhaps as he and his family did during the war? He is always running, has no home? The so called “palaces” were the words used by the parents/himself in describing the different hiding locations, and that exotic palace reference kept the deception/the discovery of their disguises less frightening? These are just my interpretations of one paragraph, you will have to come to your own conclusions should you choose to read this book.

I would suggest researching the author and some of his other works to help explain his thought processes prior to reading. This is still to date the most beautiful book Modiano has written.

It is a dirge to young love, doomed to be sure but so intense that you know you will never feel that way again. There is nothing spectacular about the story: on a vacation, bored, two young people, both with a past already and some secrets, are going to meet, fall in love and eventually leave each other. Each word is simple but carefully chosen, each character is endearing for their colorfulness and tragic flaws alike.

This is re This is still to date the most beautiful book Modiano has written. It is a dirge to young love, doomed to be sure but so intense that you know you will never feel that way again.

There is nothing spectacular about the story: on a vacation, bored, two young people, both with a past already and some secrets, are going to meet, fall in love and eventually leave each other. Each word is simple but carefully chosen, each character is endearing for their colorfulness and tragic flaws alike. This is really a masterpiece, delicate but also very true somehow. Lesson learned. Read a book all the way to the end before jumping to conclusions about its meaning. This is a well-written book of one young man's heart-breaking 'coming of age' summer in a small French provincial town for somewhat desperate, old moneyed blue hairs near a lakeside border of Switzerland.

Yeah, we've all been there in one form or another. But Modiano captures the misty, amorphous nature of memory so incredibly well.

At times, this novel reminded me of the deeply impressionistic wri Lesson learned. Read a book all the way to the end before jumping to conclusions about its meaning. This is a well-written book of one young man's heart-breaking 'coming of age' summer in a small French provincial town for somewhat desperate, old moneyed blue hairs near a lakeside border of Switzerland.

Yeah, we've all been there in one form or another. But Modiano captures the misty, amorphous nature of memory so incredibly well.

At times, this novel reminded me of the deeply impressionistic writing of Virginia Woolf in 'To the Lighthouse' and Julian Barnes' tragic, somewhat self-delusional hero in his Booker-award winning novel 'The Sense of an Ending'. I recommend this book highly not just because the writer eventually received a Nobel Prize in Literature but because it is written so incredibly well. The mental pictures Modiano paints will, hopefully, last a lifetime.

There be great solace with close friends, good writing and 'good reads'. This is a sweet french book that has been translated into English. It's a story of a man who finds himself hiding (from anxiety it seems) in a small French town where he meets and befriends a young woman and an older man. He falls in love with the woman and they are very good friends with the older man and the three of them enjoy the summer for what summer is - lazy afternoons, dining al fresco, parties, etc. This book is more of a 'lookback' on that time in the main characters life as told by t This is a sweet french book that has been translated into English. It's a story of a man who finds himself hiding (from anxiety it seems) in a small French town where he meets and befriends a young woman and an older man.

He falls in love with the woman and they are very good friends with the older man and the three of them enjoy the summer for what summer is - lazy afternoons, dining al fresco, parties, etc. This book is more of a 'lookback' on that time in the main characters life as told by the main character. This book feels like a short story- it's very short but also very meaningful. The story has the feel of Great Gatsby but a bit more on the melancholy side. I also found it reminiscent of some of the style of The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. I really enjoyed it.

The author writes so vividly that you feel as if you are alongside these characters in every scene. As stated before I’m in thrall of Modiano and now find that I’m compulsively working my way through his novels. I’m not sure but his writing is so marvellous that somehow you feel that just as his characters are trying to find out about their past, you will too. It could be a memory that you can’t quite recall but after reading Modiano it will all come back to you. It doesn’t of course but he weaves a sort of magic that I am only just starting to comprehend. In Villa Triste the youn As stated before I’m in thrall of Modiano and now find that I’m compulsively working my way through his novels.

I’m not sure but his writing is so marvellous that somehow you feel that just as his characters are trying to find out about their past, you will too. It could be a memory that you can’t quite recall but after reading Modiano it will all come back to you.

It doesn’t of course but he weaves a sort of magic that I am only just starting to comprehend. In Villa Triste the young narrator of only eighteen arrives in a small French lakeside town near Switzerland in the early 1960s. He is fleeing the atmosphere of menace he feels around him and the fear that grips him. The Algerian war? The menace of the everyday?

Now that’s a good question. The young man hides among the summer visitors until he meets a young actress and a strange doctor. I love Paris and that is one of the reasons I read Modiano but strangely this is my favourite setting so far. He conjures up the air of a holiday place so well, never mind that it is somewhere in Northern France, rather than say the lush Coffs Harbour of my childhood.

The place has that ephemeral charm of something that is only fully open for a set period in time. “.I would go back to Carabacel, walking slowly along Avenue d’Albigny. I’ve never known nights so lovely, so crystal clear as those were. The sparkling lights of the lakeside village dazzled me, and I sensed something musical in them like a saxophone or trumpet solo. I could also perceive the very soft, immaterial rustling of the plane trees on the avenue. I’d wait for the last cable car, sitting on the iron bench in the chalet.” What struck me as I read this earlier novel was that it seemed to be more about what was remembered rather than what had been irretrievably forgotten or lost. All the details of the ridiculous Houligant Cup, a sort of brief contest for perceived elegance and savoir faire - in this instance how to arrive and get out of a car.

The day Victor and Yvonne visit her uncle and his automobile repair shop, “These crap American cars.All these shitty Studebakers.” And the magazines that the young lovers read with the dead or troubled stars on the front - Belinda Lee killed in a car accident, Lana Turner’s troubled daughter, Prince Ali Khan also killed in a car accident, Marilyn Monroe and others. But despite all the beautiful descriptions and remembered details things still prove elusive for Victor. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite passages inside the villa of the novel’s title: “We were floating. Our gestures were infinitely slow, and when we moved, it was inch by inch. Snail’s pace.

Any abrupt movement would have broken the charm. We spoke in low voices. The evening invaded the room by way of the veranda, and I could see motes of dust languishing in the air. A cyclist passed.

I continued to hear the whirring of his bike for several minutes. He too was advancing inch by inch. He was floating. Everything around us was floating.” I dare you to enter the magic spell that Modiano effortlessly weaves. It's one of those books that keeps you wondering whether something's going to happen right until the very end. Nevertheless, it's a pleasant wait - at least it keeps you reading.

To me, the book tells a plain story about some people who lied way too much for no apparent reason. I didn't particularly enjoy it because I had little to learn from it and it did not have a main event around which things are going. I did take a personal remark from 'Villa Triste' though - when I experience a story, I sho It's one of those books that keeps you wondering whether something's going to happen right until the very end.

Nevertheless, it's a pleasant wait - at least it keeps you reading. To me, the book tells a plain story about some people who lied way too much for no apparent reason. I didn't particularly enjoy it because I had little to learn from it and it did not have a main event around which things are going. I did take a personal remark from 'Villa Triste' though - when I experience a story, I should not wait for years until I sit on my desk and write it down. I don't know if the writer realised it, but it is quite clear for readers: once so magical, events could seem a little dull and pointless when they're described ten years later. Even if they look wonderful in your imagination - the final written result could never be quite as fascinating as it is when you jot it down while experiencing the whole thing.

With its descriptive, yet entertaining style, and with my edition's small dimensions - it makes the perfect book to read while traveling.

As Kincaid entered adolescence, her unhappiness turned into anger, and her relationship with her mother worsened. Strongly influenced by British colonial values, Kincaid’s mother demanded pristine behavior from Kincaid yet deemed her unable to restrain her sexuality.

At sixteen, Kincaid left her poor homeland to become an au pair for a wealthy New York family and pursue her education. She earned her G.E.D.

And studied photography at the New School for Social Research and Franconia College, but she never completed her degree. In 1973, when she began writing magazine articles, she changed her name, both to protect her privacy and to signify her new start in life. She developed a friendship with New Yorker writer George Trow, who introduced her to the magazine’s editor, William Shawn. Shawn encouraged her to submit work to him, and her writing career blossomed as she became a regular contributor to his pages.

Shawn’s importance in her life took a new turn in 1979, when she wed his son, Allen. Kincaid’s nonlinear, stream-of-consciousness New Yorker pieces bear the influence of modernists, such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Kincaid builds on that style in her first fictional work, a short story called “Girl,” which consists of a list of a mother’s orders to her daughter.

“Girl” showcases the poetic, chant-like, hallucinogenic prose that characterizes Kincaid’s first short fiction collection, At the Bottom of the River (1983), and her debut novel, John (1985). Both books display Kincaid’s talent for evoking states of mind without sacrificing sharp external detail, as well as her ability to address social issues through the domestic realm. They also explore themes that figure into much of Kincaid’s work, such as loss of innocence, betrayal by the mother, identity confusion caused by colonialism, and parallels between maternal and imperial authority. Kincaid’s next publication, the nonfiction A Small Place (1988), poses a scathing comment on Antigua’s tourism and postcolonial institutions and marks a new level of anger in her writing. Lucy, published in 1990, retains the anger of A Small Place but simplifies the style of Kincaid’s earlier work by using less repetition and surrealism. The first of her books set completely outside the Caribbean, Lucy, like most of Kincaid’s writing, has a strong autobiographical basis.

The novel’s protagonist,, shares one of Kincaid’s given names and her birthday. Like Kincaid, Lucy leaves Antigua to become an au pair in a large American city. At nineteen, Lucy is older than previous Kincaid protagonists, which lends the book a more mature and cynical perspective than in her previous fiction. Still, Lucy has pangs of homesickness and unresolved feelings about her mother, and she has never lived on her own or seen much of the world. With plenty of room for growth, Lucy’s journey takes the form of a bildungsroman, a novel in which a young protagonist makes the transition to adulthood.

Lucy also joins the tradition of American immigration literature, tales that recount a newcomer’s experience in the United States, such as those seen in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, and Julia Alvaerez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Along with exploring immigration, Lucy, as does much of Kincaid’s work, grapples with tensions between mother and daughter.

Colonial themes of identity confusion and the connection between maternal and imperial rule stand out less clearly in Lucy than in Kincaid’s earlier books but have an underlying presence in Lucy’s relationship with her white, affluent employers, her homeland, and her new surroundings. Kincaid continues to publish acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, such as The Autobiography of My Mother (1995) and Mr. Potter (2002), both novels, My Garden (Book) (1999), a book-length essay, and My Brother (1997), a memoir concerning her brother’s death from AIDS.

While black, feminist, and postcolonial critics take much interest in Kincaid, her writing resists fitting into neat political categories. Unlike many Caribbean authors, who try to shake off the traditions of their colonizer to form independent modes of expression, Kincaid draws upon her colonial literary heritage to explore her experience. In the process, she critiques and redefines that heritage. Though her writing often explores issues of race, gender, and class, she rejects the idea of viewing her identity and work primarily in terms of social politics. Others might lump her together with other black woman writers, but she sees little connection between herself and African-American female authors such as Toni Morrison. Nonetheless, she believes in the importance of knowing one’s history, as Lucy and her other books eloquently demonstrate.