Review of "The Reader on the 6.27" by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

Slightly annoying 'quirky' French novel, about an awkward and introverted man who works in a plant that pulps unsold books to make recycled paper (on which other books are then printed). He lives alone, he has a succession of pet goldfish, he reads aloud on the train from random pages snatched from the pulping machine...get the picture?

It might have made a quirky film like Amelie, only some of the humour is very toilet - he eventually falls in love with an unknown woman toilet attendant in a shopping centre, who he knows only from her writings, via a USB drive that he finds on the train...cue lots of shit jokes about toilet users, which will probably prevent it from being made into that film.

There's an unpleasant air of menace throughout, that ultimately doesn't deliver - the anticipated bad things don't happen, which is at once a relief and a disappointment, as if a trick has been played on the reader.