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Suspended Sentences

Although originally published separately, Patrick Modiano's three novellas form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a kind of autobiography, but one that is also the biography of a place. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers — all appear in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists. In this superb English-language translation of Suspended Sentences, and Flowers of Ruin, Mark Polizzotti captures not only Modiano's distinctive narrative voice but also the matchless grace and spare beauty of his prose. Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation of France, these novellas reveal Modiano's fascination with the lost, obscure, or mysterious: a young person's confusion over adult behavior; the repercussions of a chance encounter; the search for a missing father; the aftershock of a fatal affair. To read Modiano's trilogy is to enter his world of uncertainties and the almost accidental way in which people find their fates.