The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

Christine Féret-Fleury, translated by Ros Schwartz

Pan Macmillan

Otago Daily Times, December 21st 2019

Juliette has been a reader for as long as she can remember. She knows more about the characters of her favourite novels than she does her friends and remembers familiar strangers such as the regulars on her Métro line not so much by their faces as by what they read; the woman with the book of Italian recipes, for example, or the man with the etymology text. Whether her love for imaginary worlds is because her own is so safe or is a way to keep it so, she is not quite sure. Either way, she is resigned to a life lived vicariously until one wintery afternoon when she discovers Books Unlimited in an alley near the real estate office where she works.   

At first, she thinks it is just another second-hand bookstore but soon realises that it is something even more magical: Rather than selling his wares, the proprietor, Soliman, redirects them directly toward the readers who need them most, using a network of passeurs who identify worthy recipients and present them with the perfect book to mend their lives. Immediately drawn to both the shop and its unusual owner, Juliette takes her first steps into the unknown, quitting her job and embracing Soliman’s vision first as a passeur and, after his death, as guardian of his legacy (and, briefly, his daughter), a responsibility as liberating as it is terrifying.

Although described as a story to charm book lovers everywhere, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro seems specifically designed for analysis by high-school English classes and community reading groups rather than enjoyment. It is written in elaborately stilted prose (which, to be fair, may be the fault of the translator rather than the original author) and is peppered with literary references and banally portentous utterances haunted by the unspoken injunction “Discuss”: “[E]ach book is a portrait and it has at least two faces…[t]he face of the person who gives it, and the face of the person who receives it” for example, or “Nothing in [very encouraging], in life. It’s up to us to find encouragement wherever our eye, or our enthusiasm…is able to find it.” This impression is further reinforced by the inclusion at the end of the book of a partial list of the books Juliette takes on her first foray as Soliman’s literary heir, an invitation to the reader to add their favourites to her library, and as a series of Reading Group Questions.

The novel also suffers badly from Bridget Jones syndrome; as miserable as Juliette may be, it is hard to feel sympathy for a beautiful woman living a financially comfortable, if boring, life in the heart of Paris. Soliman and his daughter have a much more interesting story to tell, but we are given only hints of their troubled past, and their main functions are as springboards to Juliette’s self-revelation rather than as characters in their own right.

As a long-time bibliophile, I applaud the sentiment, if not the style of The Girl Who Reads on the Métro, and the fact that there is to be a reader out there for whom it will be the perfect story. I am only too happy to pass it on to you, whoever you are, but rather than hand it on directly, I’m leaving it at my favourite second-hand bookshop. I’m sure it will find you.