It’s a warm night in Brittany. While you’re cushioned into the sheets of your bed, the waves crash into the shore and the seagulls call softly. From your hotel room, you can see the glow of moonlight cast upon the large rocks on the beach. Water collides with them and explodes into the air.
Your vacation to the Iroise Sea was supposed to be relaxing. A chance to escape the stresses that your home life had you tangled in. And for the most part, it was. Until this very moment when you realise that you’d forgotten to bring something to put you to sleep. A trusty pillow, ear plugs, anything.
In haste, you rummage through the side tables of the hotel room in the hopes of finding some remedy to a torturous night of tossing and turning.
That’s when you see it. Towards the back of the drawer. Perhaps having been pushed there by previous customers.
A manuscript.
It was tattered in the corners—worn by time, crinkled by neglect and dusted with age. How long had it been sitting there? How much longer would it have sat there if not for you coincidentally requesting the exact room it was in? Did the person who left it there know the kindness they were doing, leaving a cure to your restless slumber?
In that hotel room, you had no way of knowing that a simple accident could change your life forever. That this manuscript would shape you.
There you have it. The butterfly effect.
Cathy Bonidan takes the butterfly effect to a mystical and inspiring new level in ‘The lost Manuscript’. Through a series of letters, we follow the story of Anne-Lise Briard and her unrelenting determination to trace the steps of a manuscript’s journey after finding it abandoned in a hotel in Brittany. Going back thirty years, Anne-Lise meets many unique people and hears how a simple manuscript shaped their lives.
Bonidan uses a unique form of storytelling to form her characters and show that every person has their own journey. Through these letters, we can find humour, happiness, frustration and love that slowly ascends between Anne-Lise and her many friends. Over time, we watch the subtle growth of true friendship and love while also witnessing their tribulations and hardships.
This book felt like the sun on your back on a cold morning. It’s the warmth of a cup of coffee in the palm of your hands against a chilly breeze. The distant smell of old, yellowed pages in an antique bookstore. I could imagine myself reading this on a balcony in the middle of France with a fresh, warm croissant in hand.
Reading this book made me feel like I was taking a leisurely stroll through time. The form of letters gave me a close and personal connection to the characters, as though they were addressed to me. I loved the indirect way the story unfolded, how the gaps in time displayed a personal development of the characters. Though we couldn’t see what happened when Anne-Lise spent a holiday with her friends, Sylvester and Maggy, the letters she wrote to them afterwards displayed a vast difference in emotion and light-heartedness that showed how their friendship had developed after their time spent together.
However, it did become slightly difficult to follow each character’s story throughout the book when new ones were introduced. I found myself getting mixed up with some of the side characters’ stories and the number of parents, cousins and lovers of said side characters. And hearing each of these stories made it a very slow-paced novel that took me a few weeks to read.
Bonidan’s use for the butterfly effect has shown me how the simplest of acts can connect us all in an invisible string of life. How someone’s actions can be a steppingstone for something significant in another’s life. How a discarded manuscript can shape people across thirty years of passing from one place to another.
So, what would I rate The Lost Manuscript?
Though this story was a little confusing and very slow-paced, I adored the romanticism in Cathy Bonidan’s writing and how she took me on an enchanting and heartfelt journey through letters. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a slice-of-life and feel-good read. This is the kind of book you can cosy up on the couch with, in the mornings with a hot chocolate in hand. If you’re looking for a charming story about friendship, fate and forgiveness, The Lost Manuscript is for you.
It’s certainly a wondrous thing to see how one simple act can shape another’s life. How a person misplacing a dollar on the street can help another break even for their dinner. How the supermarket selling out of one type of cereal can help someone discover their love for toast.
And maybe—just maybe—how a certain book review encourages you to read a novel that might be your new favourite.
There you have it. The butterfly effect.
Find ‘The Lost Manuscript’ here!
