三席、古書傾ぐ店の女あるじのイメージが小説的でふと足をとめさせられる。

I've got a very ridiculous translation from Google here. I wonder if someone could help me.
"The image of a woman seated in a three-seat, antique book store is novel and suddenly stops."

The whole passage is as follows.
三席、古書傾ぐ店の女あるじのイメージが小説的でふと足をとめさせられる。古風で且つ新しく、謎めく世界は作者の抱きもつものであろうか。

I can't work out how three seats fit in the sentence. Perhaps it can't be fully fathomed out of context.
What is inclining or leaning, the old books?
What is ふと足, fat foot?
I think とめさせられる is the causative-passive form of とめる.
Is 抱きもつもの the view the author holds?

healer said:

I've got a very ridiculous translation from Google here. I wonder if someone could help me.

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First of all, I would strongly, strongly recommend that you not use Google Translate as part of your studies. Machine translation, especially for languages as fundamentally different as Japanese and English, is still ridiculously unreliable, and the "translations" that it spits out are more likely to confuse you than to offer any insight whatsoever into the Japanese constructions.

Google Translate is a decent last resort for people who literally don't know anything about a language and need a translation of random text. It's not really appropriate or useful in any way as a learning resource.

</end rant>

三席、古書傾ぐ店の女あるじのイメージが小説的でふと足をとめさせられる。古風で且つ新しく、謎めく世界は作者の抱きもつものであろうか。

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I'm reluctant to offer any definitive statements absent further context (of which there doesn't appear to be any; this example sentence from -めく, -めいた is literally the only hit on the internet I get for these phrases), but for what it's worth:

I can't work out how three seats fit in the sentence. Perhaps it can't be fully fathomed out of context.

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It seems both 三席 and 古書傾ぐ are modifying 店, like an abbreviated form of 三席のみの、古書が傾ぐ店, i.e. a small establishment with only three seats and half-tipped over old books lining shelves. (though the sentence doesn't say anything about shelves, or what kind of establishment it is).

What is inclining or leaning, the old books?

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Yes, absent any further context, it strikes me as an elided form of 古書（が／の）傾ぐ店

What is ふと足, fat foot?

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ふと足 isn't a single compound word here, but rather ふと is an adverb modifying 足をとめさせれる.


[quoteI think とめさせられる is the causative-passive form of とめる.[/quote]
You're right. The almost literary mystique of the shop and its female proprietor cause (the onlooker) to stop in their tracks.

Is 抱きもつもの the view the author holds?

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Yes, note that this is the only interpretation because it's 作者の抱きもつもの. (This could also be rephrased as 作者が抱きもつもの.)

jt_ said:

First of all, I would strongly, strongly recommend that you not use Google Translate as part of your studies.

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I don't wholly rely on Google. That is one extra or alternative resource.
Yes, that was one of the given example sentences where I learnt めくor めいた.

jt_ said:

ふと

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I missed this in the dictionary I used while the headword was in kanji. It does say further down that this is usually written in kana alone.

jt_ said:

作者の抱きもつもの. (This could also be rephrased as 作者が抱きもつもの.)

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I often have the suspicion that there is a subtle difference in nuance in these two formats while both are grammatically and semantically possible. Would you think so?

healer said:

I often have the suspicion that there is a subtle difference in nuance in these two formats while both are grammatically and semantically possible. Would you think so?

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There is no difference between の and が. Here's a thread of the same topic.