Antoine Laurain's charming novels

Antoine Laurain is a contemporary French writer known for his charming novels which often blend elements of magical realism, humour, and wit, with gentle observations about the absurdities and challenges of human life. Laurain's stories frequently feature ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. He has a remarkable ability to blend humor and pathos in a way that makes his books both entertaining and thought-provoking. Here's a look at three of his books.

The President's Hat

This book is set in 1986, and to those of us who were alive then, it evokes all the nostalgia of a pre-digital world. The pace is slow, and the story has a fable-like quality to it. There's a wonderful variety of characters, all of them grappling with something or the other in their lives, from a problematic boss to a loss of inspiration to an identity crisis to relationship issues. Each of them is living a life that is less than it could be. And then something happens, and their lives change, and they change, or perhaps they become more themselves.

The book begins with Daniel Mercier, an accountant, who one day decides to treat himself to a special dinner at an elegant Parisian brasserie. His wife and son are out of town, so he prepares to dine alone. Soon after he’s seated, a party of three arrives at the table next to him. One of them is François Mitterrand, the President of France. Mercier is amazed. He listens to the conversation of the presidential party as he has his dinner, and he imagines himself a fourth at their table.

The meal is concluded, and the President and his companions leave. Mercier notices that Mitterrand has left his hat behind. He picks it up without anyone noticing, puts it on his head and leaves the restaurant. And somehow, he feels different. His life changes for the better soon after this event. And so do the lives of the other characters who become temporary owners of the hat. Most of these characters don't meet in the story, but the separate threads of the narrative, come together very satisfactorily in the end.

The Red Notebook

Laurent Letellier is a bookseller. He runs a bookshop called Le Cahier Rouge, which could be loosely translated as The Red Notebook. He has a daughter, an ex-wife, a girlfriend, a best friend, and a life that, while not humdrum, is routine. He goes through his routine one morning, not expecting anything out of the ordinary, when he finds a woman’s handbag, an expensive looking one, sitting on top of a garbage bin.

The bag is in too good a condition to have been thrown away. He opens it and finds that it has an assortment of items, the kind that tend to collect in a woman’s handbag, but no phone and no wallet. So, clearly, someone took the phone and the wallet and tossed the bag aside. Laurent takes the bag home, hoping to find something in it that might give him a clue about the owner so he can return it. There is a bottle of perfume, lipstick, a set of keys, photographs, a book signed by its famous author, and a notebook in which the owner of the bag has scribbled thoughts and opinions, seemingly in passing.

He glances through the notebook and starts to read. He finds himself charmed by the person who penned those thoughts. She seems like someone he would very much like to meet. This proves to be difficult, but he persists. A good half of the book is about his quest, about the way he puts all the clues together and figures out who the owner of the handbag is. The story of Laurent’s search is interspersed with glimpses into the woman’s life and what is going on with her as Laurent tries to track her down. Obviously, he succeeds. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention that, but how it all happens makes for interesting reading.

Vintage 1954

This is a story about time travel, and it is set in the now almost-forgotten Paris of the 1950’s. There are four main characters, Hubert Larnaudie, a middle-aged real estate agent, Magalie Lecoeur, an antiques restorer, Julien Chauveau a barman who works at Harry’s bar, and Bob Brown, an American from Milwaukee, who works for Harley Davidson. Hubert, Magalie and Julien are neighbours who live in the same apartment building. Bob is an Airbnb tenant who has rented an apartment in their building.

The story begins one evening when Hubert invites Magalie, Julien and Bob to his apartment to share a bottle of wine that he’d just picked up from his cellar. It was a bottle of Chateau Saint-Antoine, 1954, an exceptional wine. They have a wonderful evening sharing the wine and trading stories. They wake up the next morning and step out of the building, expecting a perfectly normal day, only to find, that it is, in fact, a beautiful day in 1954.

They spend the day exploring the city, each going to places of personal significance to them. Laurain indulges himself and his readers by writing about the city as it was back then. He writes about the people of the day, both the famous and the perfectly ordinary as well the places that have since disappeared or have changed so much as to be unrecognisable.

After a thoroughly memorable couple of days, they get back to their own time in 2017. The explanation for why they went back in time and how they got back to their own time is a bit far-fetched, but I don’t think that matters. Because the how of time travel is irrelevant, at least to this story. It’s a contrivance, just a means to take the characters out of their familiar surroundings and put them in the past, a particular time in French history and the history of the world.

That was a good time. Not everything about it was perfect. The world was less inclusive, for instance, but it was still a good time. There was a lot about the way people lived back then that was charming and life-affirming. We get to see and experience some of that along with the characters, who while initially shocked to find themselves in the past, are delighted by everything they see. They are eager to get back to their own time, but they can't quite leave the past without a feeling of wistfulness.