Who do you give credit to when a novel in translation is beautiful and moving? Did I read Cathy Bonidan’s The Lost Manuscript? How much input did the translator, Emma Ramadan, have? I’ll never know, but kudos to both of them for the feelings this epistolary novel evokes.

In April 2016, Anne-Lise Briard begins a quest that will span continents and involve a number of people. She finds a manuscript in Room 128 of the Beau Rivage Hotel on the Brittany coast. The manuscript moved her so much she wanted to return it to the original writer, but she had no name. So, she sends it to the address in the manuscript, but she has no idea whether she’s writing to a man or a woman.

Sylvestre Fahmer answers her. Although he lives in France, he wrote half of the manuscript, and lost it on a trip to Montreal in 1983. When he wrote it, it ended on page 156 where the address was. Someone picked up his manuscript, and completed the story, but Sylvestre has no idea who completed it or where the writing has been for over thirty years.

So begins a correspondence between Anne-Lise and a number of other people. She’s determined to track down “Waldo”, as in “Where’s Waldo”, the person who completed the book. She was moved by the book, but, as the search reveals, so were other people. Anne-Lise wants Sylvestre to complete his manuscript. She wants to read his voice, telling him, “The things we leave unfinished stay with us all our lives like chronic pain that resists the strongest painkillers.”

Step-by-step, letter by letter, the correspondence uncovers people who were in emotional pain, who were helped by reading this book. Anne-Lise and Sylvestre find their lives changed in the course of eight months, but they’re not the only ones. As the story moves from Brittany to Paris to London to Montreal, links are formed in a chain that will lead to a surprising ending. A prisoner who read it once says, “Tell the author to publish his book. In schools, hospitals, prisons…everywhere lost souls are in need of a sign.”

I can’t reveal the stories of the people who read the manuscript, people who are caught up in Anne-Lise’s determined search. It would spoil the magic of the letters and the revealing of the past, with a hint of the future to come. I can’t even reveal Anne-Lise’s job, other than to say her stories of a work rivalry are funny.

The Lost Manuscript, though, is more than pages that have been lost for thirty-some years. Why are the letters so soothing to read? Maybe it’s a glimpse into the forgotten past, just like the device of the manuscript is. I was immediately absorbed in this book, in the letters, in Anne-Lise’s determined quest. This is a book for people with the imagination to believe that a manuscript can change lives. It’s a book for readers who enjoy letters, voyeurs who want to peek into the lives of a small group of people with only a manuscript in common. It’s a magical book for those who appreciate Cathy Bonidan’s poem, an invitation into the story.

“To all the books we’ve read.

To al those we have yet to read.

Because like sandmen,

they sprinkle into our daily lives

a few words or phrases

that work their way into our subconscious over time.

And change us.

Discreetly, but irrevocably.”

The Lost Manuscript by Cathy Bonidan. Translated by Emma Ramadan. St. Martin’s Press, 2021. ISBN 9781250256300 (hardcover), 274p.

FTC Full Disclosure – Library book