This is a strange and delightful book. I thought I had the measure of it when I first started reading, but I really didn't at all. It surprised me in all sorts of ways and I loved it. It's really a series of love stories and stories about love lost and found and discovering who we are and what we want, with a literary puzzle thrown over the top.

Way to hit the ground running. It seems that Pushkin Press, a publishers I often turn to for spreading my literary wings a little, often with much success, have teemed up with 'Walter Presents' – the thread that Channel 4 TV in the UK have of picking up European broadcasting (and then hiding them online, having shown one episode on free-to-air as a teaser). This is the first book chosen for the collab, and it's absolutely superb.

There really must be something in the French waters, for this has many of the hallmarks of Antoine Laurain, the well-known provider for Gallic quirks, that often dip into his past life in antiques as a wellspring for his ideas and characters. Well, this book could be seen as if it were him doing that, but dipping instead into the world of books and publishing – and dialling everything up to eleven. So there are copious references to authors, publishers, and other characters you may or may not have heard of (none of which matters), and even footnotes giving us some extra information here and there. This is a book about books, and about libraries, and about writing, and about life, and for once, unlike many such volumes, you don't really have to be a fan of any of the above, for this is so good it's not confined to preaching to the converted. It's a book that manages to include no end of cliché, and implausible combinations of event and people, and it still manages to get away with it, partly because it seems to carry such a winsome yet sincere grin.

I'm guessing I ought to do the token thing of divulge some of the plot, but I came to this completely blind, only clicking download because it was from Pushkin and the 'Walter Presents' badge also intrigued. So I will provide a summary of the set-up in a paragraph below, but I got so much fun out of these pages knowing so little about it, and I feel it ought to be the same for you, dear reader. I wish you could take my word about it being a brilliant discovery about a brilliant discovery. But if you do need a precis, then here it is.

The next young thing in publishing, who has fallen in love with one of her authors only to see his debut novel flop big time, finds that her parents' local library in Brittany, France, has a section where failed authors have been able to donate unpublished books they've had rejected by the professionals (the book tells us there's a real one in North America too, and the idea is lifted from the words of Richard Brautigan). Scanning through it they find a marvel – a little book that combines heart-wrenching evocation of the end of a romance but also the death of Pushkin, the Russian poet. The thing gets published to great acclaim – but how on earth could it ever be reconciled with the man assumed to have written it, who was a workaholic and seemingly not literary pizza maker? The book concerns the revelations that that bizarre happenstance leads to – and also the surprising effect his lost tome has on everyone connected to it and his family.

An unexpectedly light and humorous offering by Foenkinos, satirizing the pretentiousness of the Parisian literary society. Could a pizza maker who never was seen reading a book truly have written an almost perfect novel? Erudite, charming, delightful.

Charming and ever so slightly comical story,of a book that's found in a library of rejected manuscripts.
Who was the author?
Could it be proved or disproved?
I enjoyed the stories connected to the main one,how the books discovery touched so many lives,some in a good way,some not.
Pleased to have an answer at the end too.