Christine Feret-Fleury

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.… (mere)

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.… (mere)