Fiona’s Reviews > The Girl Who Reads on the Métro > Status Update

she had ended up believing, no, being convinced, that all the world’s diseases – and all the remedies – were concealed between the covers of books? That in books you found betrayal, solitude, murder, madness, rage – everything that could grab you by the throat and ruin your life, not to mention others’ lives, and that sometimes crying over printed pages could save a person’s life?

Firouzeh, that means “turquoise”,’ Zaide had explained. ‘My mother lives a long way away . . . in a town called Shiraz.’
She’d dragged Juliette into her room, pulled out a fat atlas from the pile of books propping up her bed on the door side and, turning the pages energetically, had pointed at a dot around which she’d drawn a circle with a bright-blue marker pen.

On Sundays, Juliette went to every car boot sale because she ached at the sight of those boxes where old books had been chucked carelessly, almost with disdain, and which no one bought. People came for second-hand clothes, Seventies bric-a-brac and household appliances that were still in working order. They hadn’t the slightest interest in books. So she bought them, filled her shopping basket with odd books,

‘Have you heard of the principle of releasing books into the wild?’ he went on, after a few moments’ silence. ‘An American, Ron Hornbaker, created, or rather developed, the concept of BookCrossing in 2001. Turn the whole world into a library . . . a lovely idea, don’t you think? You leave a book in a public place–a station, park bench, cinema–someone picks it up, reads it, then releases it elsewhere