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After the publication of Villa triste (1975), several of Patrick Modiano's novels contain a storyline that is similar to the main plot of this novel: a man—often the story's narrator, who is also the male protagonist—recollects his adolescent years in the 1960's, and his brief encounter with a young and mysterious woman. In this article, I will study the function of this female protagonist in Modiano's novels. She is first and foremost a “passeur”: she leads the male protagonist into the new worlds of love and crime, and she even provokes his “coming to writing.” Furthermore, she is the one who transports the shades of the past, making it possible for the narrator to give the readers a fragmentary depiction of a world that no longer exists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]