Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick Modiano reflects back with his character, Jean, to portray a fictional romance with the perplexing Dannie in 1960s France. THE BLACK NOTEBOOK is a love affair set in Paris, and the small details kept in Jean’s black notebook are not the foremost secret. Instead, it is what they help him remember about a surreal and meaningful lost love.

Jean grapples with the notebook just as eagerly as he does with the memory of his love. His love lost breaks his heart into fragments revealed in the text bit by bit, and the long silences between them are loud. New insights arrive around each city corner, usually dark but sometimes alight, as the writing turns corners too. A fleeting love through all hours of the night, there are hotels and restaurants half-recalled, like the many cafes they frequented in the half-lit evenings of the Parisian night, as were ephemeral conversations lost in the often suspicious atmosphere of the city following the Algerian War of Independence’s after effects.

"The virtuosity of the book lies in the affecting style of its voice. The subtly spectacular writing is artistically presented --- transporting the reader back slowly, poetically and dreamlike."

The black notebook reminds Jean of patterns of wallpaper in rooms faded thoroughly into the past, and assists him in remembering the objectionable company who often passed through Paris with him and Dannie. It is suggested that maybe the mysterious Dannie fled another place to come to France, leaving them with a lingering sense of danger and confusion that harkens back from an earlier time and land. New memories are made, as others are left behind. The sense of altered time some chase with drugs, Jean says he finds in Dannie, with minutiae of special moments felt to last a lifetime. Exchanges had, mysteries solved or furthered, and memories made in shady locales or in candlelight, and even at times when walking the dog, are the lifeblood of the connection they share. Though fragmented, memories run together to complete a romance. Is it not the little things we remember most? With books on the bedside table and conversations recalled, Modiano leaves us with impressions fading in the twilight.

As attractive as the story is, the plot of THE BLACK NOTEBOOK is secondary to the substance of emotion Modiano conveys in this 1960s Parisian love affair. The virtuosity of the book lies in the affecting style of its voice. The subtly spectacular writing is artistically presented --- transporting the reader back slowly, poetically and dreamlike. His whimsical smartness can be compared to other great French writers who came before. There is not much prose being written today that is composed with such aesthetic structure, and with the flow of a short story, it is able to be read in one long sitting.

THE BLACK NOTEBOOK is a tale of how interacting with the past can stir up the present and impact many lives along the way. There is much that will forever remain a mystery, yet one thing is for sure: The highly creative writing of Patrick Modiano will further his legacy as a deserving contemporary Nobel Prize winner.