French author Cathy Bonidan's English-language debut, The Lost Manuscript, is a moving epistolary adventure that follows four lost people on a mission to find an author. When Anne-Lise Briard discovers a manuscript in her hotel room in Brittany, she's inspired by its contents and decides to return it to the author herself, instead of handing it in at the front desk. The postal system is able to find Sylvestre, the author of the first half of the manuscript, and he and Anne-Lise start exchanging letters.
Sylvestre Fahmer lost the only copy of his book on a trip to Montreal in 1983, and The Lost Manuscript is the story of Anne-Lise's efforts to trace its 30-year journey back to the unknown person who decided to pick up and finish it. Anne-Lise is almost chronically nosy, pushing past Sylvestre's resistance and enlisting the help of friends and strangers alike in her quest. These events are recounted entirely through letters, most of which are between Anne-Lise, Sylvestre and two others. Often left in storage for years at a time, the novel pops up again and again, and changes the lives of those who read it, often inspiring them to pick up the pieces of their lives and start anew.
Bonidan's characters are funny, annoyed, frustrated and disappointed, but the end result is heartwarming. Full of complex side characters, The Lost Manuscript, translated from the French by Emma Ramadam, has a clever structure scaffolding a familiar theme: the power of stories to connect and reconnect flawed people and open their hearts. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels