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The Paris Express
Apr. 16th, 2025 03:12 pmThe Paris Express by Emma Donoghue takes place in 1895, entirely within one eight-hour train journey across France. It's based on a real-life disaster, with the author using a lot of historical detail about who was on the train and what happened, but also fabricating a lot of detail to fill in the gaps.
It took me a while to get into the story, since most of it is made up of a long series of (admittedly extremely well written) character studies, going through the backgrounds of all the crew and passengers, rather than telling a cohesive, forward-moving story. By page 175, we had 15 different POVs and the introduction of 30 other characters besides, so it was a lot to keep track of.
It's not a long book, but it took me four days to get through the first half - not because it was difficult to read or I wasn't enjoying it, but it wasn't particularly dynamic, despite the knowledge of impending disaster.
Then I read the whole of the second half in less than a day, because I was fully invested in what was going to happen to all the characters by that point - and also because the pace and tension really ramp up in the later stages.
It was pretty grim in places, unexpectedly explicit in others, and also quite graphic in a specifically unpleasant way. But there was also a lot of really interesting historical detail about culture, society, technology, logistics, politics, class inequality, privilege and race.
I was on the edge of my seat for the last few pages, which were both grim and also a bit anti-climactic. But overall, a very well written and well constructed read.
It took me a while to get into the story, since most of it is made up of a long series of (admittedly extremely well written) character studies, going through the backgrounds of all the crew and passengers, rather than telling a cohesive, forward-moving story. By page 175, we had 15 different POVs and the introduction of 30 other characters besides, so it was a lot to keep track of.
It's not a long book, but it took me four days to get through the first half - not because it was difficult to read or I wasn't enjoying it, but it wasn't particularly dynamic, despite the knowledge of impending disaster.
Then I read the whole of the second half in less than a day, because I was fully invested in what was going to happen to all the characters by that point - and also because the pace and tension really ramp up in the later stages.
It was pretty grim in places, unexpectedly explicit in others, and also quite graphic in a specifically unpleasant way. But there was also a lot of really interesting historical detail about culture, society, technology, logistics, politics, class inequality, privilege and race.
I was on the edge of my seat for the last few pages, which were both grim and also a bit anti-climactic. But overall, a very well written and well constructed read.
