ISBN: 9781509868339
Author: Christine Féret-Fleury
Publisher: Copy courtesy of Pan MacMillan
“The Girl Who Reads on the Metro” is a quick and easy book to read in a day with a very simple storyline. I enjoyed the plot line about people’s passion for books and it is based around the principle of releasing books into the wild (you leave a book in a public place and someone picks it up and reads it and then releases it back out into the world once finished).
I love this concept as here in Australia I follow “Books on the Rail”. Juliette lives in Paris, working a 9-5pm job she does not love and the highlight of her day is her trip on the Metro to and from work. She reads and people watches, checking what they are reading and dreaming up stories of who these people are and why they have picked the books they have. I too commute for work and I love being able to read on the train and you do get to know the people you travel with daily in your head.
We seem to have habits like which carriage we get into and where we sit and Juliette lets her imagination go regarding the lady with the cookbook, the young girl with the romance novels and the amateur ornithologist. One morning Juliette decides to get off at a different station and she is drawn to a rusty gate wedged open with a book. Why would someone do that to a book is her first thought and so she enters after meeting the owners daughter and she is invited in.
She meets Soliman and his daughter Zaide and finds the most enchanting bookshop that he runs, different to any bookstore she has ever been in. He introduces her to the role of a passeur – “The passuer has to choose a reader. Someone they will have watched, even followed, until they are able to intuit the book the person needs.” Juliette finds her own way to complete the task of a passuer but I loved this concept, that books can make people feel better, change their mindset, bring back memories or just make a person feel loved.
The characters are simple, the writing simple but I loved the theme of the magic of books – reading and sharing them. I do recommend it and I am sure any booklover will find magic in the pages.
Thank you Pan MacMillan and Beauty and Lace for the opportunity to read and review this delightful tale.
A selection of our Beauty and Lace Club Members are reading The Girl Who Reads on the Métro. You can read their comments below, or contribute to the discussion by leaving your own feedback.
Love reading especially on my train commute to and from work. Read most genres but my favorite would be Australian Rural Fiction. Love to support Australian Authors and Beauty and Lace have shown me some fantastic writers that I now read and follow.