The Girl Who Reads on the Métro Book Review

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Juliette rides the metro every day and sees the same people, sometimes reading, sometimes looking a little different, and likes to keep tabs on their wellbeing. The one place she can escape is in books, and after deciding to leave her 9–5 job, she meets Soliman who owns a mysterious bookshop, of which she becomes a passeur. Charged with the responsibility of matching those with a book that will solve a certain problem in their life, both Juliette and Soliman seem worlds apart, but both have something to teach the other about life…

I’ve thrown around the phrase “like a hug in a book” a fair amount, but I honestly don’t think any book epitomises that phrase as much as this one does! Juliette had such an interesting outlook on life and while I feel that there wasn’t necessarily much plot within this book, it was delightful to see how she approached each new situation.

I also enjoyed that while there wasn’t much going on, and most of the musings were more like unanswerable questions about the universe, hidden within this book were small teachings, about grief, fatherhood, love, friendship, and longing which gave it a depth I appreciated.

The book was so beautifully written, I was in awe the whole time! And if you look at my rating below, it’s one of the rare occasion that I’ve giving ‘Quotability’ a 10/10. For me, a book has to be written in a way that I fall in love with the words, and Féret-Fleury had me head over heels.

Here’s just one of the many passages I adored: “That in books she found betrayal, solitude, murder, madness, rage, everything that could grab you by the throat and ruin your life, not to mention other’s lives, and that sometimes crying over printed pages could save a person’s life. That finding your soulmate in the middle of an African novel or a Korean tale helped you realise the extent to which human beings suffer from the same ills the extent to which we are all alike and that it’s perhaps possible to talk to one another to smile, caress one another, exchange signs of recognition any signs to try to harm others less from the day to day.”

All in all I do think this book’s strength lay in the writing rather than the plot, not that I really had any issues with it, there just wasn’t that much happening. So if you’re fond of slow, meandering books that ponder the meaning of life – this one’s for you!