4 Jean-Paul Didierlaurent – The reader on the 6.27

I am behind on my blog posts because I underestimated the work that comes with also writing about what you read.

Guylain Vignolles hates his job at a book pulping factory, so he steals a few pages of what is left of the books to read them out loud on the 6.27 train as his higlight of the day. One day he finds the diary of a woman which he falls in love with by reading it on the train.

The reader on the 6.27 was recommended to me because one of my favorite book is "The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink. So I was excited and maybe I got my hopes up too high to be objective. Since it's a french book I did know the book was going to have a really romantic, honest voice much like "Amelie". But I felt like there was constant repetition, like we didn't already understand Guylain hated his job and the book pulping machine. It's often used as an artistic device but in this book it seemed clunky and unnecessary to me and a lot like Mr. Didierlaurent was either short on pages or really drunk. While the characters were well-rounded, I didn't come to like the whiny main character. I only appreciated the guy in the wheelchair whose legs got ground up in the pulping machine and recycled into books that he was collecting. But instead of helping this poor guy move on Guylain was withholding some of those books to keep wheelchair man busy. Yes, you're saving him from not having a purpose but you're also keeping him from finding a new one that doesn't focus around his tragic accident. WELL DONE.

So I was already over this book by the end of the first half. I understand that some people can really appreciate it and its story and maybe I just had too many expectations in the beginning. A French production firm already bought the movie rights and I can definitely see this as a good movie. I would watch it because all in all I did like the idea of the book.

I'll give it 4 out of 7 Baguettes.