As I discussed in Chapter 6 of this book, the ‘sameness’ of Modiano's novels is a characteristic that seems to stem from a variety of reasons, with equally various effects. Sometimes seen as a result of certain autobiographical compulsions, it is a quality of which the author himself cannot be unaware, and which indeed he has been seen to parody in an arguably postmodern acknowledgement of both the ‘Modiano novel’ and correspondingly typical ‘Modiano criticism’. On the levels of structure, themes, tone and atmosphere, his most recent books have remained eminently recognisable as ‘Modiano novels’, so much so that a reviewer of La Petite Bijou described it as the same sort of story as ever, ‘à cette variante que cette fois, l'univers est exclusivement féminin’. But these novels also contain significant developments: for instance, in the depiction and development of his female characters in the above-mentioned novel amongst others, as I hope the previous chapter has shown; and, as I will argue in this one, in Modiano's treatment of time. In this chapter I will attempt to show how, through his partial adoption of a Nietzschean notion and his engagement with Proustian ideas about extratemporality, Modiano's understanding of time seems to be evolving, and how this has had a corresponding impact on his attitude towards the ‘sameness’ prevalent in his own oeuvre.

NIETZSCHE'S ‘ETERNAL RECURRENCE’

In his most recent novels, Modiano appears to have found both a philosophical and artistic basis for their apparent ‘sameness’: Nietzsche's concept of ‘Eternal Recurrence’. This may seem at first sight to be a surprising notion to find in a Modiano novel, but its presence in his works since at least 2007, the year of Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue, makes perfect sense as part of the novelist's increasingly fatalistic vision of the circularity of life, both individual and collective, especially in certain locations. Since La Petite Bijou, Paris has been the main location of Modiano's novels, although his characters often hark back briefly to childhoods just outside the capital, or to holidays in the south of France.