Books about bibliophiles are quite something, no? The author name drops, the contextual literary references, the constant whiffing of old books inhaling their essence into the last letter. It’s a heady concoction because their passion is evident. There’s a certain degree of typecasting that bibliophiles have to endure in terms of their visual depictions in media – mandatorily bespectacled, called out for being ‘nerds’ (as if that were an insult), frazzled hair, and the list goes on. Literary representations are much closer to home, cause well, most authors are bibliophiles themselves.
Christine Féret-Fleury’s The Girl Who Reads On The Metro is an ode to book lovers everywhere, or at least a solid attempt in doing so. The premise is what most readers would call cute, set in France with the protagonist, Juliette, using reading to escape from the monotony of her day to day subsistence as a real estate agent. The titular metro/subway is the setting for a lot of happenings and just the way it’s described would remind a lot of readers of their own travels with a book or two in tow. Cute, like I said.
Juliette comes in contact with this mysterious Father-daughter duo of Solimon and Zaide, who own a mysterious bookshop and is introduced to the world of passeurs, people dedicated to sharing books with the random people who they feel need to read that book. Juliette is drawn towards the duo and the entire setup, becoming a passeur herself. She ends up taking up a lot more on her hands than she had hoped for due to certain untimely events and the book heads off to a tangent with subtext about global terrorism. While I appreciate the effort the author took to highlight the same, I’m not sure it necessarily aligns with the premise, which I felt was originally supposed to be all about books and them a medium to travel the world, a gateway of sorts. The plot meanders a fair bit, trying to be meaningful while also attempting to retain the original context of bibliophiles growing in number, one book to a random stranger at a time.
The read: The writing’s lovely and the settings are great, but the story arc and the protagonist’s lack of conviction and evolution through the pages means that I’m fairly disappointed. It didn’t help that the book never really got hold of me despite the original promise the title and the brief displayed. I do appreciate the tabulation of all the books and authors mentioned at the end which will make for a ready reference as I move forward in this endeavour of mine. The book made me very nostalgic about shopping though with flashbacks from Flora Fountain, College Street, Fullcircle, Kitab Khana and so much more. Hopefully, to Blossoms, Higginbothams, and much more soon. (F*** you, coronavirus!)
The Trivia: BookCrossing is the act of releasing your books “into the wild” for a stranger to find, or via “controlled release” to another BookCrossing member, and tracking where they go via journal entries from around the world – this is referenced in the text and the direct premise for the basic tenet of passing on books to strangers. Conceived by Ron Hornbaker in March 2001, this has now spread to several countries with over 13 million books released. You can read more about it here.
6/365.
Documentation
Book: The Girl Who Reads On The Metro
Author: by Christine Féret-Fleury, Ros Schwartz (Translator)
Year of Release: 2017, 2019 (Translated)
Publisher: Flatiron Books