Michael Joseph pre-empts Mol's 'lyrical' account of a mysterious illness

Penguin Michael Joseph has pre-empted a memoir from Oliver Mol about his experience of a mysterious illness and how his role as a train guard helped his recovery.  

Editorial director Jillian Taylor acquired world rights to the memoir from Marianne Gunn O’Connor at Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary Film/TV Agency. Penguin Michael Joseph will publish in summer 2022. 

The publisher said: “In the tradition of Brain on Fire and Darkness Visible, with the hopefulness of Reasons to Stay Alive, Train Lord is a candid, illuminating narrative that bravely examines the impact of illness on one young man’s life.” 

The blurb reads: “Seven years ago, Oliver Mol was a healthy 25-year-old. Then one day the headaches started. For 10 months the pain was constant, exacerbated by writing, reading, using computers, looking at phones or anything with a screen. His doctors couldn’t figure out how to fix him. Isolated and in pain, Oliver suffers a breakdown. One evening, high on pain killers, he googled the only thing he could think of: ‘full-time job, no experience, Sydney’.  An ad for a train guard appeared. For two years Oliver will watch others live their lives, observing the minutia and intimacy of strangers brought together briefly until his own sense of self slowly returns. 

“A lyrical, heartbreaking account about Oliver’s 10-month migraine, his recovery in Australia, and a job on the railway when there were no other options, Train Lord is an extraordinary memoir – a story of identity, family, shame and addiction, but ultimately one of hope and persistence, and learning to start again.”   

Train Lord grew out of Mol’s stage show of the same name, performed with the Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe Festivals. 

Mol said: “In 2015, I suffered a 10-month migraine. No doctors could help me, and I nearly threw myself in front of a train. It wasn’t that I wanted to die; I just wanted, needed, the pain to end. After I began working as a rail guard, I discovered a new sense of self. Slowly I found my way back to writing. This memoir grew out of paragraphs scribbled on the backs of train diagrams. It is a book that I never in my wildest dreams expected to be published by Penguin Michael Joseph. Train Lord was my way out of a difficult time, and I hope that it might help someone else realise that they are also not alone. Because this is, in the end, a story of hope.” 

Taylor commented: “Train Lord is a stunning piece of non-fiction that upends all the tropes of the illness memoir. Oliver’s emotional journey back to health explores what it truly means to feel at home in one’s body. Illuminating a condition that affects millions but which remains widely misunderstood, this book is about the darkness of depression, but it is also ultimately about survival and redemption. Oliver is an astonishingly courageous writer, and we are so delighted to be publishing his book and launching a very exciting career.”