Twolives, stretched between two cities, converge in a chance meeting withimmediate and far-reaching consequences in this compelling, sophisticated talefrom acclaimed New Yorker writer Tessa Hadley, author of Accidents inthe Home and The Master Bedroom. As father struggles to reestablisha relationship with his estranged daughter in London, surrendering himself toan underground life of illegal squats and counterculture friendships, a wifedecides she must flee her suffocating marriage to return to Wales, where inCardiff she may rediscover the passions that once fueled her life. Embracingchange and facing loss, in a story evocative of Alice Munro’s Runaway andJulia Glass’ I See You Everywhere, Hadley’s powerful charactersilluminate the furthest reaches of love, hope, and determination.
The London Train (P.S.)
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Book Description
"Hadleyis a lovely, subtly teasing writer." —New York Times Book Review
Long-listed forthe Orange Prize
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Hadley's fourth novel (after The Master Bedroom) is at once a melancholy and delightful story about Paul, a poet and father of three going through a midlife crisis in a small town outside of Cardiff, Wales, and Cora, a woman from his past whose impact on his life is minimal, and yet, for the reader, pivotal. What begins as an argument with a neighbor spirals into a domestic meltdown that sends Paul storming out and traveling to London to find Pia, his daughter from a former marriage, who, as it turns out, is pregnant, has dropped out of school, and is living in an illegal flat with her boyfriend. Paul, unsure how he should act, teeters back and forth from father figure to thrilled participant in her chaotic existence. Cora, on the other hand, has taken refuge from London in her recently deceased parents' house in Cardiff after separating from her husband and now enjoys the simplicity and the quiet of the country. Her narrative fleshes out the connection she has to Paul and reveals him to be a much weaker man than he'd like to acknowledge while simultaneously offering a smart take on starting over. Hadley's twin narratives are perfectly tuned and heavy with lacerating observations about the way fate works. (June)
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(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
“Powerful…. Ms. Hadley has a talent for the canny detail…. There are platoons of novelists producing work about middle-class marriages in disarray, most of it very dull. Ms. Hadley is one of the gifted exceptions, and the calm acuity with which she depicts these fractured relationships is haunting.” (Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal )
“[Hadley] is a writer who has always allowed her fiction space to breathe beyond its narrative borders. . . . Shows how language, deployed with precision or daring, can make thrillingly new the textures and undercurrents of everyday life.” (Peter Parker, Sunday Times (London) )
“Hadley is a close observer of her characters’ inner worlds. Her language can be fine-grained, subtle, eloquent…. Hadley is a supremely perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence, someone who goes well beyond surfaces.” (Jean Thompson, New York Times Book Review )
“The London Train brings a quiet, nuanced intelligence to domestic fiction….The London Train is the sort of muted, thoughtful read that requires switching from the clattering express onto life’s slow local tracks. Hadley, a meticulous stylist, has woven into her narrative reflections on memory and time.” (Heller McAlpin, NPR )
“Impressive. . . . a triumph of form.” (Ti Sperlinger, Independent on Sunday (London) )
“Hadley’s strength lies in her characterization. . . . . There’s something pleasingly human about them. With characters like these Hadley makes us wonder what forms our own darkness takes.” (Richard Platt, TimeOut (London) )
“Spectacular….A compelling and serious page-turner.” (Anna Shapiro, The Observer (London) on Accidents in the Home )
“Tessa Hadley is a writer whose antennae are almost indecently attuned to the interior static of private lives....[M]asterly...” (Emma Hagestadt, The Independent )
“Elizabeth Bowen-like in its attention to nuance in language and behaviour, this concise novel also offers a sharp portrait of modern Britain.” (Peter Parker, London Sunday Times )
“The minds of Paul and Cora are so fully occupied by this most astute and sympathetic of writers....Hadley has crafted real excitement, so that each story ends in a flurry of curiosity and The London Train snaps shut with an effective twist.” (Susanna Rustin, The Guardian )
“[Hadley] is a writer who has always allowed her fiction space to breathe beyond its narrative borders. . . . Shows how language, deployed with precision or daring, can make thrillingly new the textures and undercurrents of everyday life.” (Peter Parker, Sunday Times (London) )
“Hadley is a close observer of her characters’ inner worlds. Her language can be fine-grained, subtle, eloquent…. Hadley is a supremely perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence, someone who goes well beyond surfaces.” (Jean Thompson, New York Times Book Review )
“The London Train brings a quiet, nuanced intelligence to domestic fiction….The London Train is the sort of muted, thoughtful read that requires switching from the clattering express onto life’s slow local tracks. Hadley, a meticulous stylist, has woven into her narrative reflections on memory and time.” (Heller McAlpin, NPR )
“Impressive. . . . a triumph of form.” (Ti Sperlinger, Independent on Sunday (London) )
“Hadley’s strength lies in her characterization. . . . . There’s something pleasingly human about them. With characters like these Hadley makes us wonder what forms our own darkness takes.” (Richard Platt, TimeOut (London) )
“Spectacular….A compelling and serious page-turner.” (Anna Shapiro, The Observer (London) on Accidents in the Home )
“Tessa Hadley is a writer whose antennae are almost indecently attuned to the interior static of private lives....[M]asterly...” (Emma Hagestadt, The Independent )
“Elizabeth Bowen-like in its attention to nuance in language and behaviour, this concise novel also offers a sharp portrait of modern Britain.” (Peter Parker, London Sunday Times )
“The minds of Paul and Cora are so fully occupied by this most astute and sympathetic of writers....Hadley has crafted real excitement, so that each story ends in a flurry of curiosity and The London Train snaps shut with an effective twist.” (Susanna Rustin, The Guardian )
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tessa Hadley's THE LONDON TRAIN, a novel in two parts, has the unique distinction of being both high-brow and accessible. It's not written with flowery, over-the-top language, but it's not colloquial or dull, either. Hadley has a way of introducing us to people that we don't particularly sympathize with but still feel as though we understand. Upon completing the novel, I can't honestly say that any of these people could be my best friends . . . but I don't need them to be. I can read about them and their difficult, messy lives, then move on.
Very introspective, this novel falls into the category where not much actually happens -- but so much does. As the story unfurls and reveals more and more about Paul and Cora's lives, particularly in the past, we're painted an accurate glimpse of two very interior lives. The novel could have become dry -- very easily -- but, you know? For me, it worked. I started reading on a Friday evening and wound up finishing almost half before bed. Hadley's writing is mesmerizing.
Though it lacked the strong emotional component I crave to make a book a favorite, I can certainly see why THE LONDON TRAIN was longlisted for the Orange Prize and is generating buzz. The story's strength, like all good books, lies with the characters. For good or for ill, these were people I really got to know. Without much difficulty, I could probably sketch you a list of their likes and dislikes, pains and triumphs. They're people who will stay with me, especially Paul. It brings chance encounters to new, romantic and heartbreaking heights.
Very introspective, this novel falls into the category where not much actually happens -- but so much does. As the story unfurls and reveals more and more about Paul and Cora's lives, particularly in the past, we're painted an accurate glimpse of two very interior lives. The novel could have become dry -- very easily -- but, you know? For me, it worked. I started reading on a Friday evening and wound up finishing almost half before bed. Hadley's writing is mesmerizing.
Though it lacked the strong emotional component I crave to make a book a favorite, I can certainly see why THE LONDON TRAIN was longlisted for the Orange Prize and is generating buzz. The story's strength, like all good books, lies with the characters. For good or for ill, these were people I really got to know. Without much difficulty, I could probably sketch you a list of their likes and dislikes, pains and triumphs. They're people who will stay with me, especially Paul. It brings chance encounters to new, romantic and heartbreaking heights.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By Bookreporter
Format:Paperback
Married people meet on a train, fall in love, then part: There is a Brief Encounter feeling to this novel, despite its modernity. In the first section, the titular "London Train" is Paul's means of escaping his family in the Welsh countryside to join his pregnant daughter (by a first marriage) in the city. In "Only Children," which follows, Cora rides the train when she flees London --- and her husband --- and returns to her birthplace in Cardiff. Beyond the train itself, the comparison with that classically reticent film makes sense because of the way Hadley's prose recalls its painful delicacy and tremulous undercurrents. Her intelligence is keen; her writing is fresh and precise.
Paul is a middling author and critic living with his wife, Elise, and their two daughters. His mother has just died in a home for the elderly; on the last night of her life, she made what the institution's owner calls a "bid for freedom" --- meaning that she wandered out into the garden wearing only her nightgown. When Paul subsequently discovers that Pia, his adult daughter, is pregnant and living in a grubby London flat with a couple of Polish immigrants, he sets out to rescue her. But within days he finds himself slipping into Pia's life, dabbling in a more casual, less thwarted existence.
Loss also triggers change for Cora, a teacher married for a dozen years to Robert, an apparently unflappable civil servant considerably older than herself. Like Paul, she is an only child, and like him she has been left fretful and unmoored by her parents' deaths. Unhappily childless, torn between a desire for independence and her "old-fashioned wife-identity," she starts commuting to Wales to renovate her childhood home with a view to its eventual sale. It's not clear what triggers her separation from Robert --- we hear about it only in retrospect. But when the house is finished, instead of putting it on the market, she moves in.
Paul and Cora's stories are presented separately, so the reader can relish the gradual unearthing of the parallels --- and one actual intersection --- between their trajectories. Their respective "bids for freedom" are the obvious link. Hadley is brilliant at evoking the ambiguities of intimate life: the contradictions of parenthood and marriage; the cycles of loss, betrayal and reconciliation. But larger social/philosophical issues also make an appearance in THE LONDON TRAIN: environmental dangers, immigration policies, city vs. country, faith vs. skepticism, past glories vs. "progress."
The emphasis on Paul's intellectual life was a conscious effort, according to Hadley's afterword ("Writing The London Train"). In his section, conceived first, she challenged herself to integrate abstract ideas with storytelling. Thus, Paul's conversations with his depressed and rather marginal bachelor friend, Gerald, often have a didactic air. He tends to wax polemical about the neighboring farmer, Willis, and his modern "improvements," for example the destruction of hedgerows and aspens that are getting in the way of his tractor ("Trees are just trees," Willis says unsentimentally). As for Elise, her very profession --- finding and refurbishing junky, discarded pieces of furniture --- represents a tension between old and new, a theme that preoccupies Paul and becomes a leitmotif for the whole section.
I liked Paul's tale, yet as soon as Cora's began, I was completely hooked on her newly minted voice and unsettled state of mind: half-married, half not. Sometimes Cora loves sleeping alone, without Robert, "weightless and free"; other times, she is "scalded by her solitary nights, sodden with dreams and longing....." The same ambivalence shapes her attitude toward not having children. She grieves, yet finds that she misses motherhood more as an idea than a reality, and "in any case, the lack that had used to be savage pain was flattening into a duller wincing....." In this transitional phase, she works in a library, where she finds peace of a kind and devours undemanding books ("women's novels," a disparaging and ghettoizing term if ever there was one, though I know what she means) to avoid too much thought about the future. Then Robert, of all unlikely people --- he became, for me, the most intriguing character --- goes missing, and Cora can no longer mark time. She is forced to act.
Bisecting a novel in this fashion carries the risk that the two sections won't be equally successful. Sadly, Paul's seems to me slightly forced. Maybe it is a gender issue; his sensibility is simply drier and more cerebral than mine. But perhaps it's also because, as Hadley herself confesses, she struggled with Paul's narrative, while Cora's story "was written in a flowing single line, not reworked over and over."
Which means that "P.S.," a feature the publisher has tacked onto THE LONDON TRAIN --- including not only a description of Hadley's experience working on the novel but an autobiographical sketch; a reprinted newspaper article, "In Praise of the Present-day Novel"; and a list of her favorite books --- could be self-sabotaging. I am dubious about freighting a novel as good as this one with supplementary material. Surely it can and should stand alone.
My advice: Just climb aboard. One measure of my satisfaction is that I'm about to run off (virtually speaking) to secure copies of Hadley's previous fiction. Meanwhile, long after the well-resolved (but perhaps not final) endings the author has given Paul and Cora, THE LONDON TRAIN's images and ideas linger like dust motes in sunlight, radiant in my mind.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
Paul is a middling author and critic living with his wife, Elise, and their two daughters. His mother has just died in a home for the elderly; on the last night of her life, she made what the institution's owner calls a "bid for freedom" --- meaning that she wandered out into the garden wearing only her nightgown. When Paul subsequently discovers that Pia, his adult daughter, is pregnant and living in a grubby London flat with a couple of Polish immigrants, he sets out to rescue her. But within days he finds himself slipping into Pia's life, dabbling in a more casual, less thwarted existence.
Loss also triggers change for Cora, a teacher married for a dozen years to Robert, an apparently unflappable civil servant considerably older than herself. Like Paul, she is an only child, and like him she has been left fretful and unmoored by her parents' deaths. Unhappily childless, torn between a desire for independence and her "old-fashioned wife-identity," she starts commuting to Wales to renovate her childhood home with a view to its eventual sale. It's not clear what triggers her separation from Robert --- we hear about it only in retrospect. But when the house is finished, instead of putting it on the market, she moves in.
Paul and Cora's stories are presented separately, so the reader can relish the gradual unearthing of the parallels --- and one actual intersection --- between their trajectories. Their respective "bids for freedom" are the obvious link. Hadley is brilliant at evoking the ambiguities of intimate life: the contradictions of parenthood and marriage; the cycles of loss, betrayal and reconciliation. But larger social/philosophical issues also make an appearance in THE LONDON TRAIN: environmental dangers, immigration policies, city vs. country, faith vs. skepticism, past glories vs. "progress."
The emphasis on Paul's intellectual life was a conscious effort, according to Hadley's afterword ("Writing The London Train"). In his section, conceived first, she challenged herself to integrate abstract ideas with storytelling. Thus, Paul's conversations with his depressed and rather marginal bachelor friend, Gerald, often have a didactic air. He tends to wax polemical about the neighboring farmer, Willis, and his modern "improvements," for example the destruction of hedgerows and aspens that are getting in the way of his tractor ("Trees are just trees," Willis says unsentimentally). As for Elise, her very profession --- finding and refurbishing junky, discarded pieces of furniture --- represents a tension between old and new, a theme that preoccupies Paul and becomes a leitmotif for the whole section.
I liked Paul's tale, yet as soon as Cora's began, I was completely hooked on her newly minted voice and unsettled state of mind: half-married, half not. Sometimes Cora loves sleeping alone, without Robert, "weightless and free"; other times, she is "scalded by her solitary nights, sodden with dreams and longing....." The same ambivalence shapes her attitude toward not having children. She grieves, yet finds that she misses motherhood more as an idea than a reality, and "in any case, the lack that had used to be savage pain was flattening into a duller wincing....." In this transitional phase, she works in a library, where she finds peace of a kind and devours undemanding books ("women's novels," a disparaging and ghettoizing term if ever there was one, though I know what she means) to avoid too much thought about the future. Then Robert, of all unlikely people --- he became, for me, the most intriguing character --- goes missing, and Cora can no longer mark time. She is forced to act.
Bisecting a novel in this fashion carries the risk that the two sections won't be equally successful. Sadly, Paul's seems to me slightly forced. Maybe it is a gender issue; his sensibility is simply drier and more cerebral than mine. But perhaps it's also because, as Hadley herself confesses, she struggled with Paul's narrative, while Cora's story "was written in a flowing single line, not reworked over and over."
Which means that "P.S.," a feature the publisher has tacked onto THE LONDON TRAIN --- including not only a description of Hadley's experience working on the novel but an autobiographical sketch; a reprinted newspaper article, "In Praise of the Present-day Novel"; and a list of her favorite books --- could be self-sabotaging. I am dubious about freighting a novel as good as this one with supplementary material. Surely it can and should stand alone.
My advice: Just climb aboard. One measure of my satisfaction is that I'm about to run off (virtually speaking) to secure copies of Hadley's previous fiction. Meanwhile, long after the well-resolved (but perhaps not final) endings the author has given Paul and Cora, THE LONDON TRAIN's images and ideas linger like dust motes in sunlight, radiant in my mind.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Harper Perennial edition of "The London Train" (2011) by Tessa Hadley is made to order for book reading groups with a taste for good literary fiction. There is more than enough here to spark two hours of lively discussion. First of all is the fact that the story is actually two related stories, both short length novels. The title novel (161 pages) is coupled with "Only Children" (also 161 pages).
How come two novels? The answer, which Hadley provides in the very useful Harper Perennial P.S. section that follows the text, offers plenty of discussion material. "[I]t began with my desire to write like a man . . . . I wanted to flex the male bits of my sensibility." And flex them she did in "The London Train." In the second novel, "Only Children", which, in her word "mirror[s]" the first, she writes in her normal tone as a woman. Convincing cross gender writing is not easy. Annie Proulx (e.g. "Heart Songs and Other Stories" 1988) carries it off as well as any woman author I've read. The group's views on Hadley's effort are bound to make for lively debate.
Hadley's insights about writing, and about her writing particularly, are quite as penetrating, although not as extensive, those Flannery O'connor provides in "Mystery and Manners" (1970). Hadley expresses hers in the short essay "In Praise of the Present-Day Novel"in the P.S. Section. There is more than enough here to get the group from coffee to cake. "[W]riting is slow, and the `present day' the novelist struggles to express will likely be a lifetime, the whole span of time in which they are alive and witnessing..." Hadley's insights, elegant prose, and sense of time and place make clear that she has mastered the art of writing. See if you don't agree.
End note. Hadley lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, a short commute across the border to England. The train of the title story operates on the Cardiff to London line, a trip that takes about two hours, roughly the same as the train trip from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to Pennsylvania Station in New York City. For those, like myself, who have never had the opportunity to take the train from Paddington Station to Cardiff Central, it is fun to imagine Hadley's characters in action in coach on an afternoon Amtrak run from NYC to Philly.
How come two novels? The answer, which Hadley provides in the very useful Harper Perennial P.S. section that follows the text, offers plenty of discussion material. "[I]t began with my desire to write like a man . . . . I wanted to flex the male bits of my sensibility." And flex them she did in "The London Train." In the second novel, "Only Children", which, in her word "mirror[s]" the first, she writes in her normal tone as a woman. Convincing cross gender writing is not easy. Annie Proulx (e.g. "Heart Songs and Other Stories" 1988) carries it off as well as any woman author I've read. The group's views on Hadley's effort are bound to make for lively debate.
Hadley's insights about writing, and about her writing particularly, are quite as penetrating, although not as extensive, those Flannery O'connor provides in "Mystery and Manners" (1970). Hadley expresses hers in the short essay "In Praise of the Present-Day Novel"in the P.S. Section. There is more than enough here to get the group from coffee to cake. "[W]riting is slow, and the `present day' the novelist struggles to express will likely be a lifetime, the whole span of time in which they are alive and witnessing..." Hadley's insights, elegant prose, and sense of time and place make clear that she has mastered the art of writing. See if you don't agree.
End note. Hadley lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, a short commute across the border to England. The train of the title story operates on the Cardiff to London line, a trip that takes about two hours, roughly the same as the train trip from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to Pennsylvania Station in New York City. For those, like myself, who have never had the opportunity to take the train from Paddington Station to Cardiff Central, it is fun to imagine Hadley's characters in action in coach on an afternoon Amtrak run from NYC to Philly.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent - Enjoyed it very much!
Arrived fast.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Read more
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Published 1 month ago by Computer Science
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cast of unlikeables
Tessa Hadley's `The London Train' is a hodgepodge of disparate characters whose connections are ill drawn and unsubstantiated. Read more
Published 6 months ago by ivona poyntz
5.0 out of 5 stars
loved it
Nice to find a new (to me) author who's great to read. It's a brilliant book, clear eyed, surprising and sensitive to how people love and live. I didn't want to put it down. Read more
Published 6 months ago by weeks
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Anglophile's Delight
I just discovered Tessa Hadley. As an Anglopile,I really enjoyed this well written novel.The author has created realistic characters. I highly recommend this book. What does P.S. Read more
Published 9 months ago by L.I. LINDA
3.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging enough
This story kept me relatively interested until the end. I did not care very much about any of the characters, but I think that was the point. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Jennifer Allison
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dissolving Marriages Offer an Opportunity to Connect Anew
The London Train is really two stories in one that merge as the book enters its second half. We are first introduced to Paul who is on his second marriage but most definitely... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Joseph Landes
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting character study
A beautifully written novel of two parts linking the two main characters by a chance meeting on a train. It is written in an interesting way with very good character studies. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Denise Gibbs
5.0 out of 5 stars
Separation and Self-Possession
I ordered this book knowing nothing about it, simply that it was on the New York Times list of best fiction of 2011. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Roger Brunyate
3.0 out of 5 stars
The London Train, always leaving the station...
I wasn't really sure what to expect from this novel. It has an odd structure, divided into two parts, two different people's stories, coming together in the second part. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Kiki
4.0 out of 5 stars
A really lovely book.
For me the most interesting aspect of Tessa Hadley's wonderful novel is the way she enters so completely into her characters' private worlds. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Richard Thurston
