The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

by Christine Féret-Fleury

Everyone was going to die. And she would never know them, never approach them, never speak to them, and all those stories walking past on the street inside the people carrying them—she would never know anything of them.

It must be part of the inescapable human condition—each person ultimately deaf, impervious to other people’s emotions, incapable of deciphering gestures, looks, or silences, all condemned to give painful explanations with words that are never the right ones.

And Juliette missed her. Oh, how she missed her. She had always tried to smooth the ground beneath her daughter’s feet, guiding her toward the safest paths, where she would meet neither obstacles nor difficulties. Nor adventures. Nor any other kind of unforeseen event. Nothing that could hurt her deeply, nor anything that could stir her passions, elevate her above herself, above her cautious certainties, her almost cloistered, gentle, humdrum existence.

A journey is when you go to a place you don’t know,”

Books and people need to travel.”