Salhia Brakhlia goes to meet a woman who exercises an essential profession in society. Pascale Girard is a traveling bookseller. She confides in the microphone of franceinfo.
A colorful heavyweight with lots of drawings, which is 8 meters long: welcome aboard the Mokiroule, Pascale Girard’s traveling bookstore. A truck filled with 3,000 books that comes to meet the inhabitants of the villages of Drôme and Ardèche. Pascale had the project to take over a bookstore. Problem: Pascale is unable to be sedentary. “I wanted this bookstore to exist in the small valley where I live and so the easiest thing was to put the books in a truck”she explains.
Already a heavyweight license holder, Pascale had this passion for books and sharing books. The traveling bookseller goes to ten towns in all, six a week. “In some municipalities, I am in the market, or after schoolshe explains. I find it interesting to bring the book where it is notshe says. And above all to bring it really within the reach of people. I like the idea that on the market we can put leeks, potatoes and books in the same basket.”
“There are people who come in my truck, when I’m at a market, who maybe wouldn’t enter a bookstore.”
Pascale Girard, itinerant booksellerat franceinfo
“We don’t have many businesses in our villages and when we have one, we try to keep itcontinues Pascale. People have understood that by ordering from me and not on Amazon, it was the only way for me to live”. Despite this, Pascale admits, her business “is not very profitable” : “It’s the least profitable business in France. But I find myself there. I live only on that. Fortunately because I work 60 to 70 hours a week.”
“In rural areas, we still have a deficit because even in a town of 5,000 inhabitants, opening a bookstore, honestly, there is still little chance that we will manage to get by.recognizes Pascale. Yet there is appetite for the book. I think there is room for a lot more mobile bookshops elsewhere in France.”
“Essentials”, a franceinfo podcast by Salhia Brakhlia, to be found on the franceinfo website, the Radio France application and several other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Podcast Addict, Spotify, or Deezer.