I was watching a chat show on French TV the other day, and I caught Marc Levy promoting his latest novel. A dark, good-looking man, with a sort-of beard and the most wonderful sparkling brown eyes, he got my attention immediately! He seemed to be a man who was passionate about what he did and had given ‘everything’ up to be a writer. It appeared he wrote bestsellers too, so I listened as all the reviewers raved about his debut novel ‘Et si c’était vrai,’ which came out here in 2000. A fantasy, a magical tale etc etc - I thought ‘The Alchemist’ or ‘The Reluctant Messiah’. I turned the TV off and decided I would buy his book.

Browsing in the station bookshop before a long train journey, disinterested in the women’s magazines telling me how to look thin in a bikini or how to give my sex life a lift, I came across Levy in the ‘poche’ collection amongst Agatha Christie, Dan Brown and Zola. For 5 euros 50 with a photo inside the front cover, how could I resist? I read his bio with excitement – lived in the US, used to run an architecture cabinet, translated into 30 languages, film rights sold to Steven Spielberg, gave it all up to write. I couldn’t wait to be enchanted by this book. As the train glided out of the station, I started to read.

Now, I guess all that agent advice and stuff makes me extremely sensitive to openings, but on first appearances, this one did not look good. Alarm clock rings (a ‘no-no’), followed by some dull description of Lauren’s routine and some rather unnecessary details (in my opinion) about her apartment e.g. 'white-tiled bathroom with black squares stencilled on.' Flat prose, unlikely, dull dialogue with her dog (p5) “Don’t look at me like that…” etc., etc. It would be on my slush pile straight away. However, I persisted (didn’t have anything else, and 4 hours to kill).

Anyway, it turns out that Lauren has a car accident and goes into a coma but later reappears as a sort of demi-ghost in the airing cupboard of her apartment, which has since been re-let to a young, suave architect named Arthur. He is the only person who can see her. The story is a good ole romantic comedy and I felt like I was reading a screenplay rather than a novel – the plot is pretty solid, if you are willing to suspend disbelief about the competence of the San Francisco police department. The prose, however, is boring, and when he starts finding letters from his mother, who’d died of cancer, I realised that it had more than one thing in common with the equally sleep-inducing, “P.S. I love you.” Still, I skimmed over the descriptions of his mother’s tender words wot he’d never forget and how much she cared for her rose garden, giggled at the schmaltzy exchanges between Lauren and Arthur and got to the end of the story, which was fun, clever even. I guess this is a book for romantic souls, not me I’m afraid.

I watched the trailer for the film which comes out this year under the title of “Just Like Heaven” and they’ve managed to get a lot of visual gags in and perk up the dialogue, Hollywood-style. With Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon, it should do well at the box office. Meanwhile, Marc Levy’s latest novel is no 1 one the bestsellers list here. I don’t think I’ll be buying it though.