The London Train
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3.3 • 6 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love and Late in the Day, discover a story of two lives stretched between two cities, two stories bound by the London train.
Paul sets out in search of his eldest daughter Pia, who has gone missing somewhere in London. At first he thinks he wants to rescue her, but as time passes he is drawn deeper into the excitements of the capital, and a life lived in jeopardy, he forgets his own way home.
In the opposite direction, Cora is moving back to Cardiff, to the house she inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage and the disappointments of her London life. And then she receives a telephone call to say that her husband has disappeared...
'She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
