Sundays in August
-
-
3.4 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
From beloved storyteller and Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano, a masterful and gripping crime novel set in picturesque Nice on the French Riviera
Stolen jewels, black markets, hired guns, crossed lovers, unregistered addresses, people gone missing, shadowy figures disappearing in crowds, newspaper stories uncomfortably close and getting closer . . . this ominous novel is Patrick Modiano’s most noirish work to date. Set in Nice—a departure from the author’s more familiar Paris—this novel evokes the bright sun and dark shadow of the Riviera. Modiano’s trademark ability to create a haunting atmosphere is here on full display: readers descend precipitously into a world of mystery, uneasiness, inevitability.
A young couple in hiding keeps close watch over a notorious diamond necklace known as the Southern Cross. Its provenance is murky, its whereabouts known only to our hero and heroine, who find themselves trapped by its potential value—and its ultimate cost. Deftly Modiano reaches further and further into the past, revealing the secret histories of the two even as the pressurized present threatens to overwhelm them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nobel Prize winner Modiano (Suspended Sentences) does more with less in this subtle and haunting noir. He places the reader in uncertain terrain from the outset, as his unnamed narrator has an unexpected encounter in Nice with a man he hates and hasn't seen in seven years, Fr d ric Villecourt. Villecourt is now selling coats and jackets on the street, and the pair have an enigmatic conversation about a woman named Sylvia, who lied to the narrator about having married Villecourt. After they part, the narrator, whose ambitions to be a successful photographer have resulted in a dead-end job running a garage that's about to go out of business, is curious about Villecourt, but subsequent efforts to locate him are fruitless. Flashbacks incrementally reveal something of the narrator's past with Sylvia and their attempts to sell a diamond necklace known as the Southern Cross that they somehow got hold of. Modiano makes the reader work to put the puzzle pieces in order, while maintaining a convincing atmosphere of tension and dread.
