Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti – Published by Yale University Press in 2025

As usual with Modiano the language is beautiful. Paris comes alive from his pen so vivid is the imagery.
But it’s so short that I feel cheated. No sooner than we get to know the characters does it finish.

Modiano does roman noir so well; that his books may be similar, the atmosphere of suspense and intrigue he creates is always enjoyable to read. He also uses a young male narrator quite frequently, and that is again the case here, where the protagonist has been inspired by the unnamed ballerina of the title, by her discipline dance required and the effect that had on the time they have spent together. He is looking back on a time some unspecified amount of years before, which he calls ‘the most uncertain time of my life’. Her name, which he clearly knows but does not reveal, is of secondary importance to her art.

He wanders around Paris encountering a wide variety of people, from the ballerina’s young son Pierre who he picks up from school, to a book publisher who enlists him to finish a novella from a deceased author.
The reader inevitably remains curious about the nature of his relationship with the ballerina. Every now and then clues are provided, but there remains a sense of mystery.

A theme of the novella is change, in the narrator, but contrasted with the city itself. He referes to modern day Paris as ‘a city so changed that it no longer contained any memories for me’. As he wanders the streets he recalls his times spent in the various locations and meets people he hasn’t seen for some time… ‘images began coming back to me, in snatches, from a long-distant period of my life.’
It’s all fairly typical Modiano, splendid to read, but just too little of it.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5