After the Circus by Patrick Modiano (2015)

If there is a world capital of The Reading Life World it is Paris- Ambrosia Boussweau 

After the Circus  is my first encounter with the work of Patrick Modiano, the 2014 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature.  Paris is the setting and the heart of this novel.  Set in the 1960s, it is structured as a man relaying his experiences of many years ago.  The story lines begins with him recalling his international by the Paris police, suspicious over persons he has allegedly been reported talking with.  He sees a young woman a bit older than he, he is eighteen at the time, being questioned.  

There are a lot of mysteries in After the Circus.  The man lives in an apartment with an older man, a friend of his father.  The father evidently had to leave Paris and currently lives in Switzerland.  We never learn why he had to leave.  The young man and the few years older woman form a relationship of sorts.  Who she really is and why the police were so interested in her are a great mystery. 

I think I most enjoyed the descriptions of the city, the elegant Parisians, the interesting little restaurants, and the minor characters who come and go.

I was given a review copy of this book.

I enjoyed After the Circus a lot and will be reading more of the author's work.

Ambrosia Boussweau  

Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature and an internationally beloved novelist, has been honored with an array of prizes, including the 2010 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca by the Institut de France for lifetime achievement and the 2012 Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He lives in Paris. Mark Polizzotti has translated more than forty books from the French and is director of the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. - from webpage of the publisher, Yale University Press