Fabulous Fiction Firsts #721

Mon, 12/23/2019 - 7:49pm by muffy

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro  (Overdrive eAudio) is French author Christine Féret-Fleury’s first book to be translated (by Ros Schwartz) into English. “With a cast of characters reminiscent of the French film Amélie, Féret-Fleury creates a world that is delightful and enchanting...Light and sweet as a bonbon, this little confection of a book is delicious." (Kirkus Reviews)

Juliette, a real-estate agent, leads a perfectly ordinary (and rather solitary) life in Paris. On her daily metro rides, she notices other riders and the books they are reading - the lady with the cookbook, the man in a green hat who reads about insects, and the romance reader who always tears up at page 247.

One morning Juliette decides to walk to her office, and find herself in an unfamiliar neighborhood. When she sees a young girl slips through a rusty gate wedged open with a book, she follows, thus walking into the bizarre and enchanting lives of Soliman, his young daughter, Zaide, and Books Unlimited. Before she realizes what is happening, Juliette agrees to become a passeur, taking used books from Soliman’s “store”, and using her intuition, matches books with readers. Without a second thought, Juliette quits her job, dives headlong into a new life, and discovers that the life she may change the most could be her own.