Our narrator, Jean, is startled out of a light doze by a persistent ringing. It takes some time to it to register that it is his phone. It has been so long since it had rung and he had ceased actually wanting it to ring some time before that. The man on the line identifies himself as Gilles Ottolini and says that he has come into possession of Jean’s address book and he wants to return it. Jean thinks that he must of lost it on the train on a recent trip to the south, but he’s not actually that interested in getting it back. Many people in the book are gone or no longer wish to see him. He just wants Gilles to go away but the man is insistent and they make an appointment to meet the next day.
As the book progresses, we learn that Jean is a writer of some small import and in the later years of his life. Gilles claims to know a lot about him, then asks for Jean’s help with a project. He is very unctuous and you get a bad feeling about the whole thing, like Jean is getting set up for something. This ominous tone dissipates though, and soon we are on a journey of time and memory. The incident(s) that Jean is trying to recall is an echo from an earlier novella of his that I had read and reviewed (Suspended Sentences).The narrative swerves back and forth in time, doubles up on itself and comes around again. A few times I had to reread a passage as the memory was so porous and chimerical. I’m not complaining, the effect was powerful and thought-provoking.
“Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don’t even know.