Mystery in the making

red notebookIf you lost your bag – handbag, schoolbag or backpack, what would it tell others about you? Without your ID (driver’s licence, school ID, etc.), could you be traced? identified? found?

If you found a bag (mentioned above), what would you do?

In ‘the Red Notebook’, bookseller Laurent Letellier feels compelled, when he comes across an abandoned mauve leather handbag, to find the owner. With little identification in the bag, the mystery begins, and Laurent calls on suggestions from others, and in so doing becomes quite involved.

Following hints given by journal jottings, receipts and personal items in the bag, Laurent works to find the mystery owner. Along the way, he works through testing relationships, and surprising events while he searches.

‘The Red Notebook’ is a short romantic tale, translated from French, which makes you wonder about connections and connecting, our actions and taking time to know people, and how interwoven our lives could be in this busy world if we took the time. Laurent could have simply passed the handbag on to police after he discovered it in the street, but was the journey that followed instead worth it?

Antoine Laurain paints a description of a relaxed Parisian lifestyle, though marked by a mugging early in the tale, and peppered with the literary references you would expect from an authentic bookseller, Laurent Letellier. As a reluctant hero, he follows through his plan to reunite the handbag and its owner, with some interesting results along the way.

While not a YA novel, the emotions, decisions and cultural setting are worth discovery. Considering how people’s paths may cross in life, and the result of choices made, are some of the ideas generated in ‘the Red Notebook’.

How does he do it?  does it really make a difference in the long run? will he be able to solve the puzzle with so few clues? how does it then impact on his everyday life?

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