At one point, Modiano's gumshoe takes over. Things seem to gel, a bit. And when police question her we start to get somewhere. The story is told from the perspectives of four different narrators, each of them with their own degree of mystery. Louki is one of the narrators, recounting chapters of her past with a certain vagueness that continues the foggy train of thought of the novel. Related to that is Roland’s neutral zones. For him these are areas in Paris where one is nowhere specific, between a particular district and its neighbour, a no man’s land (he uses the English term in the French text) where one is not tied to a specific neighbourhood. These two ideas will reoccur throughout the book. The differences are that there are multiple narrators (four to be precise) and that there is a specific theme, as we shall see. Then the narrator meets her again. Ungrounded as ever, now that her mom has died, she gets married. But her husband is a cold fish who plays head games.

Flighty Louki had already taken to wandering about Paris starting when she was fifteen, already seeking something.At the halfway point of the journey making up real life, we were surrounded by a gloomy melancholy, one expressed by so very many derisive and sorrowful words in the cafe of lost youth. The young people may or may not be students – they drink too much even for students. The motherly café owner thinks of them as stray dogs and muses “things will turn out badly for them.” One of the older men says “I didn’t have high hopes for their futures.” Neutral zones have at least one advantage: They are only a starting point and we always leave them sooner or later. Note: This review refers to the US/New York Review Books edition, translated by Chris Clarke; the UK edition (MacLehose Press, also 2016) was translated by Euan Cameron.]

And, predictably, even with the benefit of four perspectives -- including Louki's own -- this central figure remains elusive. A closer relationship develops between Louki and Roland -- but both are still very young (Louki is only twenty-two -- fourteen years younger than her husband), adrift and searching.Un jour de cafard, sur la couverture du livre que Guy de Vere m’avait prêté : Louise du Néant, j’ai remplacé au stylo bille le prénom par le mien. Jacqueline du Néant.

En medio de esos personajes, destaca una tal Louki, a la que todos se refieren en sus recuerdos. Louki aglutina el puzzle que gira en torno a las memorias de varios personajes de la novela. I love Modiano. He’s a beautiful writer. In this book there is mystery, with a touch of existentialist noir, and melancholy. I see once again people find he 1) writes the same book, over and over, like any mystery writer and 2) he is boring. His Goodreads average is very low, 3.48, but for me he is an old friend, who creates an aura I recall in The White Rabbit and the Del Rio. Hmm, maybe I’ll go out for drink and talk to some strangers at that little bar down the street, get to know them, at least a little. . .

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Of course, if we did get those details, the book would fall apart. It is not, after all, a book about Louki. It’s a book about seeking for Louki, a process Louki herself is engaged in. Though she remains at a distance from us, there is a richness in exploring why she does this . . . and why the others are drawn to her and to this lost time. Young, disaffected students along with the failed and weary are the patrons of the cafe Condé—collectively known as “the lost Youth,” gathering throughout day and night to pass time. Although charged with trying to find her, Caisley ultimately decides he'll throw Louki's husband of the scent; yet even in doing the right thing can't see where it leads, the words of his generous gesture reading far differently in the story's conclusion:

Roland and other characters are interested in the mystical and otherworldly. Roland himself is particularly interested in the idea of the eternal return, the idea that everything reoccurs over and over again. One of the characters holds séances and Louki becomes interested in this subject as well. However, like much in Modiano novels, the bookshop associated with these ideas disappears and the topic fades away with the characters. En el café de la juventud perdida pretende retratar a una cierta generación de jóvenes en el París de los años sesenta. Para ello, toma como punto de referencia un cierto café Condé donde se reunían una serie de bohemios, la mayoría veinteañeros y algunos adultos que se mezclaban bien con esos jóvenes. Todos tienen en común un afán de vivir y beber el presente. Además del alcohol, algunos consumen drogas. Our having met, when I think about it now, seems like the meeting of two people who were completely without moorings in life. I think we were both alone in the world. Several characters in that loose Condé-circle are writers, of various sorts -- Raphaël and Adamov, most obviously, but also some of the others.

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In the case of the student, he seems more concerned about hiding the fact that he is still a student, at the nearby École Supérieure des Mines. The third part is narrated by Louki herself -- who is actually Jacqueline Choureau, née Delanque, as we learned from Caisley.