Review of THE GIRL WHO READS ON THE MÉTRO by Christine Féret-Fleury

2.5 Stars

This quick-read novella argues that a book can change a person’s life.

Juliette, though she lives in the exciting city of Paris, has a dull office job.  Her passion is reading books and watching people reading books on the Paris subway.  One day she finds a strange bookshop called Books Unlimited where she meets the owner Soliman and his daughter Zaide.  Soliman recruits Juliette as a book passeur whose task it is to observe people in order to give them the gift of a perfect book for that moment in their lives.  Juliette soon discovers that the life she may change the most is her own.

I chose to read this book because it’s a book about books.  I love books about books; unfortunately, I found this one just odd.  All the characters are quirky but flat.  The protagonist is strange.  For a person who is supposedly obsessed with books, Juliette spends very little time reading.  The title of this novel should be The Girl who Watches People Read on the Métro.  Instead of reading, she occupies herself with imagining what is in the books people are reading. 

The theme is that books can transform lives:  “all the world’s diseases – and all the remedies – were concealed between the covers of books.  That in books you found betrayal, solitude, murder, madness rage – everything that could grab you by the throat and ruin your life, not to mention others’ lives, and that sometimes crying over printed pages could save a person’s life.  That finding your soul mate in the middle of an African novel or a Korean tale helped you realize the extent to which human beings suffer from the same ills, the extent to which we are alike, and that it is perhaps possible to talk to one another – to smile, caress one another, exchange signs of recognition, and signs – to try to harm others less from day to day.”

There is another book set in Paris with a similar theme which I would recommend over this one.  The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George has as its protagonist a pharmacie littéraire who recommends books “to treat all the emotions for which no other remedy exists” (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-of-little-paris-bookshop-by-nina.html). 

 And I have mentioned in the past a non-fiction book, The Novel Cure:  An A-Z of Literary Remedies written by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, which prescribes specific fiction for life’s ailments.

If I were a passeur, I doubt that I’d be gifting this book to anyone because it is not especially inspiring.  The best part of the book is the suggested reading list at the end.