Missing Person

In Modiano's Missing Person, Guy Roland is an amnesiac detective who has lost his memory ten years before the beginning of the story, which opens in 1965. His employer retires and closes the detective agency. Roland embarks on a search for his own identity. I guess he didn't get vacation days.

His investigations uncover clues to a life that seems to stop during the Second World War. It seems that he is Jimmy Pedro Stern, a Greek Jew from Salonica. He was living in Paris under an assumed name. His name is Pedro McEvoy, and working for the legation of the Dominican Republic. Confused yet? He and several friends went to Megève to escape a Paris that had become dangerous for them during the occupation.

Denise and Pedro attempt to flee to Switzerland. They pay a smuggler who abandoned them in the mountains, separating them and leaving them lost in the snow.

Having partially recovered his memory at the end of Modiano's Missing Person, Guy Roland goes to look for Freddie. Guy thinks went to live in Polynesia after the war. When he arrives in Bora Bora, he learns that Freddie has disappeared, either lost at sea or by choice. At the end of the novel, he is about to follow the last clue that remains to his past. Jimmy Pedro Stern learns he lived in Rome in the 1930s. Ah-ha, finally we're getting somewhere.

A dreamlike quality characterizes Modiano's writing style, often blurring the lines between memory and imagination. The narrative unfolds in fragments, reflecting the fragmented nature of Guy Roland's recollections. The novel is imbued with a sense of melancholy and longing, as the protagonist searches for a sense of self and a connection to his history.

Other books I've read by Modiano include Honeymoon.