The London Train
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3.1 • 40 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this New York Times Notable Book from one of today’s most acclaimed writers, two lives stretched between two cities converge in a chance meeting that will irrevocably change their lives.
“Hadley is a supremely perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence, someone who goes well beyond surfaces.”—New York Times Book Review
Unsettled by the recent death of his mother, Paul sets out in search of Pia, his daughter from his first marriage, who has disappeared into the labyrinth of London. Discovering her pregnant and living illegally in a run-down council flat with a pair of Polish siblings, Paul is entranced by Pia’s excitement at living on the edge. Abandoning his second wife and their children in Wales, he joins her to begin a new life in the heart of London.
Cora, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction, back to Cardiff, to the house she has inherited from her parents. She is escaping her marriage, and the constrictions and disappointments of her life in London. But there is a deeper reason why she cannot stay with her decent Civil Service husband; the aftershocks of which she hasn’t fully come to terms with herself.
Connecting both stories is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and Cora.
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.
