Why a Booktrail?
2000s – A man who loves books works for a book pulping company but he finds more than one way to rescue these reads…
The Reader on the 6.27
What you need to know before your trail
Guylain is a bit of a loner. He loves books so finds it hard to work in the book pulping factory so calls it The Thing. Wanting to salvage something from the destruction he is forced to commit, he gets on the train every morning to work and reads out a little passage or a few pages which he has saved from the jaws of The Thing. Guylain finds this a welcome release from the horror of his work.
One day, comes across the diary of a young woman called Julia. He reads her words and realises that she is as lonely as he is. This gives him a reason for wanting to find her and to find out what live actually means. When he reads her diary on the train, everything changes.
Travel Guide
From the jaws of a book pulping machine to the carriage of a french train, this is a journey not of settings and places but the place of comfort we find in a book and the way in which reading to save a book from certain death is something that book lovers will identify with.
This story is clearly set in France as the landscape is dotted with French humour and pathos as well as the quirks found in Amelie and other French films are all present and correct.
Working in a book pulping factory would be torture to anyone who loves books and so the very idea that Guylain saves them by reading passages out loud is charming. Finding the author of a diary, a random mission perhaps, but one which takes him further than the train journeys he takes each day.
“In The Thing, there are rats and dark corners, where books meet their death and The books disappeared into the Things’ belly in their thousands”
No trace remained of the books that had lain on the floor only a few minutes earlier. There was nothing but the grey mush that the Thing expelled in the form of Great, steaming, turds that fell into vats with a gruesome plopping sound”
From this gruesome sight the journey on the train is delightful – as he nears his work, reading expels the nausea that rises inside him. Reading releases his tension and worries. Book lovers all around the world will identify with that! A small section of the book sees Guylain in Paris, walking beside the Seine and the bouquinistes there as the bateau mouches float past the Eiffel tower. Books which people collect and sell and value. This is the book world which Guylain loves.
Where Next?
