If you read SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD simply because its author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. The prize is but a shadow of its former self and has been for over a decade. You want to read Patrick Modiano’s latest effort on its own merits.

Modiano has made statements elsewhere to the effect that he sometimes feels as if he has been writing the same book over and over. There are certainly a number of similarities from book to book, most of which deal with the reliability of memory. We’re not talking only about such things as forgetting names or having to make that “to do” list every morning; we’re also talking about the memory of recent and remote events, forgetting those that occurred in some instances and mixing dreams with real-world occurrences in the other.

"If you have wondered about Modiano’s work but have never sampled it, this one --- with its fine translation from the French by Euan Cameron --- is a good place to start, particularly for older readers."

Those of a certain age become increasingly familiar with the latter. A personal example: I have a recollection of coming home one day in the summer and finding a group of wasps, six or seven of them, doing a fly group pirouette near the ceiling of my family room. My sons deny it ever happened; I believe them, as I have no memory of how I dispatched the interlopers unscathed. I chalk it up to a very vivid dream that has somehow taken on the trapping of memory. This is Modiano’s stock in trade, with other aspects of memory --- such as one event or a word --- triggering a long buried or forgotten recollection.

SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD concerns Jean Daragane, an author of some minor renown who lives reclusively in his Paris apartment and likes it that way. His life is disturbed by a telephone call --- he almost doesn’t recognize the sound of the phone ringing --- from a stranger named Gilles Ottolini, who claims to have found Daragane’s address book. Daragane is lured out of his apartment to a cafe to retrieve the book from Ottolini, who is accompanied by a quietly enigmatic young woman named Chantal Grippay. Ottolini seems to have a secondary motive in meeting Daragane, which involves obtaining information from him concerning one of the people listed in the address book. Daragane has no memory of the man, at least at first. Memories of the man associated with his childhood, which apparently was tumultuous, begin coming back to him, particularly when Chantal secretly contacts him and provides him with further information. Despite having gotten things rolling, Ottolini disappears, although he is referenced occasionally.

Chantal starts to flit into and out of Daragane’s life like a ghost, as he begins to remember more and more of his past, of events that led him to his current state of life. Yet, there is some question as to whether these memories are real or perhaps, sparked by ideas for novels or stories that somehow took on a life of their own, enhanced by what Chantel has given him. Daragane begins to be haunted by the memory of a woman he knew as a child and encountered later. Possibly. By book’s end, the reader is wondering which of Daragane’s memories are accurate, or, indeed, whether he is some odd construct of something or someone. And that’s okay. If you feel the ground shifting under your own feet as you read this book, I get the sense that Modiano would feel that his job is done.

SO YOU DON’T GET LOST IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD is a short work, one that picks the reader up and flows in unexpected directions, seemingly at whim. It’s quietly disturbing and haunting, as insubstantial yet as beautiful as the pattern of dust motes floating through a sunlit window. If you have wondered about Modiano’s work but have never sampled it, this one --- with its fine translation from the French by Euan Cameron --- is a good place to start, particularly for older readers.