Invisible Ink: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Jean Eyben is a young private detective, working for an older, far more experienced boss in a detective agency. His boss gives him an assignment from a new client – find a missing woman, or at least find out what happened to her.Jean dutifully undertakes the job, but he soon learns two things. One, so little is known about her or her last whereabouts that every lead is a blind alley. And two, his boss certainly knows more than he initially let on and appears to have held back certain key pieces of information that might have made the assignment easier.The search ends in failure. Jean does not find the missing woman.Three decades later, Jean is prompted to resume the search. His boss is long gone; the trail of the missing woman is absolutely cold, with places, buildings, and people gone or irrevocably changed. But the no-longer-young detective feels what is almost a compulsion to resume the search. And this time, in spite of all the obstacles from the passing of 30 years, Jean begins to learn and see things he didn’t as a much younger man.“Invisible Ink” by Nobel Prizewinner Patrick Modiano is the fascinating, at times riveting story of Jean’s search for the mysterious Noelle Lefebvre. It is, and it isn’t, a detective story, for like many literary novels, it is the story of man really searching for himself.Born in 1945, Modiano has published more than 35 novels, novellas, and screenplays. He’s known for using the genre of the detective novel as a platform for creating more literary fiction. A bestselling author in France, he’s received numerous awards and recognitions for his writing, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 2014.“Invisible Ink” is a captivating story of a private detective conducting his own cold case and slowly realizing how much of that case involves himself.

Essayist Daniel Mendelsohn, on the Bookworm podcast with Michael Silverblatt, suggested, “There is a sadistic element of criticism... You get over that... There are other fish to fry.” The philosopher Stirner said, “Silence would be the best criticism of life.” Someone else—I can’t remember who—cautioned the critic to be sparing in the denunciation of an artwork, something that, no matter its faults, has some redeeming value because it is the product of careful thought and will and sustained labor. With that in mind, there is still something to be said; there is something that distinguishes works and it is a worthy endeavor to probe for the right angle, the right words to describe the distinction.My first encounter with Modiano—In the Cafe of Lost Youth—was incendiary. It was an enchanting experience. If you’re reading this you likely have had a similar confrontation with his work. I devoured Young Once, then another of his translated works, and another. I turned to Modiano for a particular sensation, a particular kind of pleasure, because his books reliably provide it. But therein lies, perhaps, their greatest shortcoming. The stories and characters, the writing, the themes—disappearance, identity, time—are so strikingly similar across his many books it is difficult, for me, to extract from memory many specifics. His oeuvre amounts to a monolithic mood, where the idiosyncrasies of each title are subsumed by a comprehensive study of memory in, usually, the Paris of yore. This is not, inherently, a defect. It is simply Modiano’s style, his m.o.But the more of him I read the less bewitched I am by his noire-ish, dreamy evocations. For there is little to surprise the connoisseur of Modiano in a book like Invisible Ink or its predecessor Sleep of Memory. As the author himself admitted in his Nobel Prize in Literature lecture, “often the same faces, the same names, the same places, the same phrases keep coming back in book after book.” Memory, he said, is, unlike in previous epochs, at war with “amnesia and oblivion.” That he feels a duty to preserve something of the Paris of his youth, of his imagination, through repeated explorations of the same motifs is indisputable and even reasonable. (His fiction is unimpeachable in this regard.) Perhaps for a Frenchman this is an evergreen subject to mine. But, for this reader, the pathology of it is beginning to make me wonder if Modiano is simply exhausted, if the device that brought him high with acclaim won’t soon return him to obscurity.

Just has received this copy, flawless, like new. Thanks for seller's arrangement

I seem to be the only person not waxing rhapsodic. It was interesting to find myself reading a novel instead of nonfiction, and I think it was an enjoyable experience overall. But I wouldn't read Modiano again. I was really rather confused by the ending so I wasn't too happy when I finished.

Modiano has been my favorite author since I found him about five years ago. I took a quick look at the other reviews before I started mine to refresh my memory about the plot. He revisits the same territory and I didn't want to confuse books. I must say there are some fine writers who review his books on Amazon. Until the end of the story it seemed to me to be an earlier work of his. It seemed to be the smallest of mysteries. A girl disappears. There is no suggestion of foul play. But the "invisible ink" slowly reveals itself and at the end there is a profound gotcha.

What an extraordinary writer, what an extraordinary book. Makes one think about one's own memories, what is forgotten, what is remembered. Loved the way that everything and everyone comes full circle, especially noted in the last pages as a man enters the an gallery in Rome and begins a conversation with the woman who has lived in Rome divesting herself of most things French. We know who the man is, and the woman is, but not knowing their stories until revealed at the very end of the book. Highly recommend this book and will order more by the author.

To forget, then remember…That process,forgetting, could be a decisive act to disguise oneself, or it could be a purposeful attempt to shed oneself of a life that has proven to be less than what one expected. Remembering then brings one back to a place that could prove to be uncomfortable.Rome is the city of forgetting in this novel for an expatriate from France. Rome for the mystery person is a place far enough away, with a different language, and different customs. But when the veil is pulled back all of the forgetting evaporates and identity moves through the shadows of time and place attempting to secure a view of oneself that makes sense.

A meandering obscure writing style. I bought it because I had read a very favourable review but I didn’t engage with this book.

If you are looking for a complex plot in the traditional sense or a load of action this book is not for you. But it is, as it promises on the dust jacket a breathtakingly beautiful novel.It’s unlike anything I’ve read. Perhaps for me it is made more special by so many references to Paris and other parts of France I know well. This must help but even without it it truly is I extraordinary book. I just ordered three more of his books.

Interesting viewpoints but I found it undeveloped and insubstantial - or maybe that is the point?