If Only It Were True

First-time French author Marc Levy published his romance novel Et si c'etait vrai... in French in 1999. Translated into English as If Only It Were True a year later, this bestseller has been adapted into movies in both French and English. The novel traces the love story between a man and the disembodied spirit of a woman who is up in a coma. Levy later published a sequel to this novel, Vous Revoir.

Lauren is a young and beautiful medical resident in the Emergency Department of San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Her life is spent working long hours helping the people who end up in the hospital, with little time left for any personal life of her own. One day, as she is commuting home after a long shift, she has a very serious car accident as her beat up Triumph skids on wet asphalt – so serious that she is lucky to be alive. Unfortunately, as a result of the accident, she ends up back in her own hospital with what looks like an irreversible grade-four coma.

Six months after the accident, Lauren’s consciousness is suddenly aware that she can exist in a kind of ghost form outside her comatose body. By experimenting, she learns that she can appear anywhere in the world just by thinking of that place. The problem is that she can’t interact with anyone or anything while in this spirit form – no one can see, hear, or touch her, and she passes through any object. In frustration, she eventually gives up going anywhere except her old apartment.



The apartment has now been rented by Arthur, a newly single architect, who one day opens the bathroom closet and is shocked to find a young woman sitting there. It’s Lauren, whom it turns out Arthur can actually see and hear – and even touch. When she tells him her story, she prefaces it, saying, “What I am going to tell you is not easy to hear, impossible to admit, but if you want to listen to our story, if you If you want to trust me, then maybe you'll end up believing me and that's very important because you are, without knowing it, the only person in the world with whom I can share this secret.”

At first, Arthur can’t believe that this woman is some kind of disembodied ghost, but after they go to visit Lauren’s body in the hospital, he is convinced. Arthur and Lauren have long conversations by which they realize how much they have in common. These talks lead to a friendship, and then, eventually, to a romance. They become inseparable, which causes a huge problem for Arthur who appears to everyone around him to be constantly holding one-sided conversations with himself. His friends worry that he is losing his mind. Arthur confides what is happening to Paul, his best friend. Paul remains skeptical but is supportive of his longtime friend.

Meanwhile, the doctors have told Lauren’s mom that there is simply no hope of her ever coming out of the coma, so she should probably stop life support and allow her daughter to die. As her mother is making up her mind to do this, Lauren starts feeling less solid to Arthur; they realize that if her body is disconnected from the machines, her spirit will stop appearing to him.



Together with Paul, Arthur and Lauren hatch a scheme to kidnap her body from the hospital to prevent this. In a drawn-out heist, they accomplish just that – but not before mishaps like Arthur disguised as a doctor being asked to help a dying diabetic. Arthur takes Lauren’s body to an old house by the sea, a place that used to belong to his mother and has stood empty ever since her death when Arthur was just a boy. There, Arthur is able to address some of his feelings about this loss, and he and Lauren confess their love for each other.

However, Arthur is no master criminal, and soon police detective Georges Pilguez tracks him and the body to the house. Arthur explains his far-fetched story, and the officer takes pity on him without really believing what he is saying. Detective Pilguez decides that it’s better for everyone if the body is just returned to the hospital as quickly as possible.

When the body returns the hospital, Lauren’s spirit is again getting weaker and less visible by the minute. The lovers do their best to make the most of what little time they have left. Finally, she disappears for good. Assuming that she has died, Arthur goes into a deep mourning period.



Meanwhile, in the hospital, Lauren wakes up from her coma and slowly recovers her strength. Her mother tells her about the strange young man who kidnapped and then returned her body to the hospital, but Lauren has no memories of what happened while she was comatose, and she doesn’t remember Arthur at all.

Ten days after she wakes up, Arthur gets a phone call – Lauren is curious to know more about this man. When he shows up, he tells her how much he misses her, but in response, she asks him to explain who he is. The novel ends as he tells her what she had earlier told him: “What I am going to tell you is not easy to hear, impossible to admit, but if you want to listen to our story, if you If you want to trust me, then maybe you'll end up believing me and that's very important because you are, without knowing it, the only person in the world with whom I can share this secret.”