A novel by Modiano is like a little music, sweet and melancholy, throbbing. It is sensitive or not. These novels are made of little things, snatches of memories that arise at random wanderings in Paris of another era. The characters are always disturbing and enigmatic, unattached, in search of identity; they are sufficient on their own to camp a strange atmosphere that is unique to this author. Here, the story completely deconstructed looks forward to chance of no further episodes that give an impression of the early confusion. Yet the history of Bormans and Elisabet The Cotz is built when one reads. No detail is left to chance, and unlike novelists who complicate their extreme narratives and which one sees all the strings here Modiano shuffleboard and leads us into a wandering which only he knows the course and that he refuses to mark to us. That air of great simplicity, it's Modiano! And even if it seems to plagiarize, you can always find fun to keep still. What remains there when we closed the book? But the little music of course.