Seeing his characters rise off the page to walk and talk is not an entirely new experience for Cambridge novelist Stephen McCauley. Almost 10 years after the publication of “The Object of My Affection,” his best-known novel was adapted into a screenplay; the film version starred Jennifer Aniston.

But the movie never felt quite like the novel had come to life, McCauley said — not that time, and not with some of his later books that were adapted into films in France.