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The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

por Christine Feret-Fleury

Otros autores: Ver la sección otros autores.

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaMenciones
2892290,524 (3.2)3
"In the vein of Amélie and The Little Paris Bookshop, a modern fairytale about a French woman whose life is turned upside down when she meets a reclusive bookseller and his young daughter. Juliette leads a perfectly ordinary life in Paris, working a slow office job, dating a string of not-quite-right men, and fighting off melancholy. The only bright spots in her day are her métro rides across the city and the stories she dreams up about the strangers reading books across from her: the old lady, the math student, the amateur ornithologist, the woman in love, the girl who always tears up at page 247. One morning, avoiding the office for as long as she can, Juliette finds herself on a new block, in front of a rusty gate wedged open with a book. Unable to resist, Juliette walks through, into the bizarre and enchanting lives of Soliman and his young daughter, Zaide. Before she realizes entirely what is happening, Juliette agrees to become a passeur, Soliman's name for the booksellers he hires to take stacks of used books out of his store and into the world, using their imagination and intuition to match books with readers. Suddenly, Juliette's daydreaming becomes her reality, and when Soliman asks her to move in to their store to take care of Zaide while he goes away, she has to decide if she is ready to throw herself headfirst into this new life. Big-hearted, funny, and gloriously zany, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro is a delayed coming-of-age story about a young woman who dares to change her life, and a celebration of the power of books to unite us all"--… (más)
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» Ver también 3 menciones

Mostrando 1-5 de 22 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
Intriguing premise, ultimately disappointing. Starts off well but overall there's too much telling (both about the characters, and about why books are wonderful and how they can magically transform people’s lives), and not enough showing. Disjointed and incomplete passages and stretches of dialogue that seemed designed to be mysterious and meaningful but, for me, just highlighted the failure to fully sketch the characters or the actions and motivations ascribed to them.

Central character Juliette is stuck in a dead-end job and too timid to explore life beyond the narrow but 'safe' confines she has created for herself. One day, after travelling the same Metro route and observing and speculating about the same collection of fellow passengers for years (all of whom seem to read books...most unlike modern public transport), she randomly decides to get off at a different stop and discovers a strange little bookshop run by the (mysterious!) Soliman. Well, it's described as a shop, but there's never any evidence of anything being sold...it's more a place where books seem to simply land, take on a life of their own, and then 'ask' to be moved on to someone else via the hands of Soliman's 'passeurs' - whom he entrusts to watch or follow strangers, silently ascertain what emotionally ails them, and then hand them the perfect book for the metaphorical junction at which they find themselves. Seeing Juliette is at a crossroads herself, he enlists her as a passeur and sends her off with a bundle of books to allocate to those who 'need' them. Juliette is a pretty lazy passeur, tbh. She offloads her first one without even knowing who it's going to (yet it still magically hits the mark). After that we only hear of her giving one to a grumpy man on the Metro (the only one where the process of intuiting a stranger's need is actually described at any length), and one each to her work colleagues as she ditches her job and takes up Soliman's rather sudden request to have her, whom he has met twice, perhaps three times, caretake the book depot and care for his strangely self-sufficient young daughter so he can go on some (mysterious!) journey.

So far so good, but the rest of the book seems to gradually run out of puff from here. The alluring premise of matching books to people as a tonic - both for the recipients, and for Juliette, on her own journey of self-discovery - is discussed (and eventually drives the resolution), but it is not really developed much further i.e. it's not shown. Two of the passengers Juliette has been surreptitiously observing for years turn out, rather conveniently, to be connected to Soliman - yet, as intriguing as their own stories seem to be, we find out almost nothing about them. What we do learn is shared fairly briefly, yet (again) we're expected to accept their experience as intimately connected to the overall story's resolution.

We spend much of the rest of the book - which isn't very long - with Juliette alternately reading, crying, working through her existential crisis with the support of the kind but loosely-sketched character of Leonidas (I wanted to know him much better), occasionally cooking for the equally loosely-sketched Zaide, and musing disjointedly with Leonidas over the role of books in our lives.

There was one little passage which stayed with me. It's when Leonidas is helping Juliette to see that the great tidy-up she feels compelled to undertake within the dusty, chaotic book depot she's suddenly responsible for may not be the place most in need of tidying up.

***

"Where, then?"

She did not recognize her own voice, which sounded feverish, ardent.

"There. Inside whatever you like to call it - your mind, your head, your heart, your understanding, your consciousness, memories...there are plenty of other words. But that is not what matters."

Supported by the armrests, he leaned towards her slightly.

"It is inside you that all these books must find their place. Inside you. Nowhere else."

"You mean...that I must read them all? Every single one?"

Since he said nothing, she wriggled, then folded her arms across her chest protectively.

"And when I've managed that...then what?"

Leonidas threw his head back and blew a perfect smoke ring, which he watched dreamily as it unfurled and hit the ceiling.

"You'll forget them."

***

We do forget so much of what we read, don't we? But the forgetting doesn't render the experience pointless. Rather, reading feels like water washing over rocks over the course of millennia - long after the water has drained away, its influence can be seen in the gullies and grooves, the ridges and striations of a cliff, the smooth curve of a long-worn boulder. It moves and shapes us in ways we can't always articulate, knocks off the edges, opens up channels, and sometimes - as contemplated here by Christine Feret-Fleury - facilitates a watershed or tectonic shift.

Some books are more forgettable than others, but they rarely bounce off us without leaving at least a tiny mark. We take something with us which remains long after the detail of a story or treatise is forgotten. In that sense I honour the love the author has brought to the idea of books as a way of salving the soul, shaping the spirit, and shifting the stuck. I know she won't mind, however, if I leave this one on a train. ( )
  LolaReads | Dec 26, 2023 |
2.5 stars

I really enjoyed the first half and loved the idea of being a passeur. Then I felt as if the story jumped ahead and I had missed the middle of the book, where the main character, Juliette, gets to know the other characters. The reader is just supposed to believe that she's come to love these people and have strong emotions about them. I didn't buy it.

The second half was terribly disappointing. It seemed like a rough first draft, rather than a completed story.

It was also sad to me that the protagonist had no close female friendships, not even at the end.

Note: There are minor sexual references and some profanity. There is one passage that makes it clear the author is pro-abortion. ( )
  RachelRachelRachel | Nov 21, 2023 |
This book just didn't grab me like
I thought it would. An easy read but not particularly memorable. ( )
  secondhandrose | Oct 31, 2023 |
This book was kind of confusing to me. Maybe I missed the point, but I didn’t hate it. I still finished the book. The point just escaped me. I could never tell what time period the book was set in, but I did like the nostalgia. The book also had a whimsical feel to it that was interesting. But overall, I feel like it was book I didn’t HAVE to read, and I wouldn’t be upset if I had never read it. ( )
  TimeLord10SPW | Jul 3, 2023 |
This book was translated from French. I wonder if some of its essence was deflated in the translation. There was certainly something there but it didn't quite measure up to my hopes.

Juliette lives in Paris and rides the bus to and from work daily. Her life is nothing if not predictable. When avoiding work one morning, her interest carries her into a curious bookstore where she is asked to become a "passuer"; that is the appellation that the bookstore owner gives to those he hires to carry books from his shop to intuitively give to unsuspecting people.

The owner also ropes her into another huge responsibility without her knowing the depth of the commitment. It wraps up with great, though unlikely ease. Everything is too simplified in this book, for me. ( )
  BoundTogetherForGood | May 4, 2023 |
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» Añade otros autores (4 posibles)

Nombre del autorRolTipo de autor¿Obra?Estado
Feret-Fleury, Christineautor principaltodas las edicionesconfirmado
Belardetti, MargheritaTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
Knotter, AngelaTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
Schwartz, RosTraductorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
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I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Aleph"
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The man in the green hat always gets on at Bercy, always via the doors at the front of the compartment, and exited via the same doors at La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle, exactly seventeen minutes later.
Citas
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Some books were frisky horses, not yet broken in, that whisked you off on a mad gallop, breathless, clinging to their manes. Others, boats, drifting peacefully on a lake under a full moon. Others still, prisons. (page 92)
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"In the vein of Amélie and The Little Paris Bookshop, a modern fairytale about a French woman whose life is turned upside down when she meets a reclusive bookseller and his young daughter. Juliette leads a perfectly ordinary life in Paris, working a slow office job, dating a string of not-quite-right men, and fighting off melancholy. The only bright spots in her day are her métro rides across the city and the stories she dreams up about the strangers reading books across from her: the old lady, the math student, the amateur ornithologist, the woman in love, the girl who always tears up at page 247. One morning, avoiding the office for as long as she can, Juliette finds herself on a new block, in front of a rusty gate wedged open with a book. Unable to resist, Juliette walks through, into the bizarre and enchanting lives of Soliman and his young daughter, Zaide. Before she realizes entirely what is happening, Juliette agrees to become a passeur, Soliman's name for the booksellers he hires to take stacks of used books out of his store and into the world, using their imagination and intuition to match books with readers. Suddenly, Juliette's daydreaming becomes her reality, and when Soliman asks her to move in to their store to take care of Zaide while he goes away, she has to decide if she is ready to throw herself headfirst into this new life. Big-hearted, funny, and gloriously zany, The Girl Who Reads on the Métro is a delayed coming-of-age story about a young woman who dares to change her life, and a celebration of the power of books to unite us all"--

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