The French translation of All the Lives We Never Lived had a bumpy start. Its release in March 2020 crashed full tilt into worldwide lockdowns. Bookshops were shut, literary festivals cancelled, reading seemed to be the last thing on people's distracted, panic-stricken minds. I thought the book would sink to the bottom of the sea floor and rest quietly there along with other wrecks. But readers are tenacious people. The other day there was an email from one of them, Valérie Voisin, which I am reproducing below unaltered because it so vividly and movingly describes her experience of how she got and read a book by an author unknown to her, during a lockdown. I am grateful to Valérie for taking the trouble to write to me and for giving me permission to reproduce her message. Dear Madam, I discovered your novel during the lockdown when the bookshop started a on-line shop section and delivered books at home. It was a new process for the...