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Le Fil de soie (The Silk Thread) by Michèle Gazier is an ambitious work, conceived in a fairy-like as well as fantastic style, while maintaining a real framework. Against the backdrop of haute couture history, the mystery of a love story unfolds in a variation on the myth of Narcissus while providing an intriguing tale. Gazier questions the fragility and discontinuity of happiness. The story is developed through "images" and words presented in a magical environment. I would like to question here the way in which Gazier explores and sets the course for the happiness of an exceptional couple. In other words, I will question the relationship between the story and the original way in which the ideas of happiness are treated. Focusing on the representation of happiness as it is constructed in this novel engages a double questioning: first of all, how stylistically, the fantastic characteristics as they are inscribed in the story reveal by writing, aspects of expressing happiness? Then, on the diegetic level, I will interrogate how an identity is built without borders, erasing the differences between two beings who love each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way an author individualizes his writing is expressed through voice, a feature of writing that is often overlooked, generally not analyzed. The phenomenon of voice is not easy to grasp and when we think of Patrick Modiano, an adjective comes to mind, one which makes it even less detectable: imperceptible. Is it possible to analyze a voice that fades, that allows the contents to be “carried on writing”? However, examining Modiano‟s work, we realize that his voice is not homogeneous. On the contrary, the loud shouting voice of the young writer of the seventies is no longer the one of the mature novelist of the nineties. It has undergone esthetic metamorphoses. It leaves deep traces in the contemporary novel, but no critic would think to connect that voice to a shout. This paper examines Modiano‟s voice during the period between 1968 and 1997, attempting to reveal its evolution from La Place de l‘Etoile, via Missing Person up to Dora Bruder, studying the tension between outcry and whisper that destabilizes the writing. Two main questions demand analysis: What is Modiano‟s voice at the beginning of his career? Which transformations or tendencies has it undergone along these years [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]