Ebook: 288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller,
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Picador 20th March 2025
Source: NetGalley
First Sentences: Half past eight in the morning, on the twenty-second of October,1895, in Granville, on the Normandy coast. Stocky, plain and twenty-one, in her collar, tie, and boxy skirt, Mado Pelletier stands across the street from the little railway station holding her lidded metal lunch bucket, watching.
Setting: Paris (France, 1895)
Review Quote: Clever, ambitious, and richly researched. A slice of 1890s Paris that makes us see that our modern problems aren’t so modern after all! The Paris Express is a smartly structured novel that ratchets up the pace until it's hurtling along as fast as the doomed train itself. -- Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
My Opinion:
Emma Donoghue has successfully used real life events as inspiration for some of her novels in the past. So I was not surprised to discover that ‘The Paris Express’ is based on the derailment at Montparnasse Station on October 22nd 1895.
The story begins at the start of the trains journey on that fateful day. We are introduced gradually to the vast cast of characters who were passengers and workers on the Granville to Paris train that morning. The main protagonist is Mado Pelletier a young French anarchist who has boarded the train intent on devastating action. As the journey proceeds we learn something of the social and political atmosphere of the period, through the conversations of the passengers which is very interesting and informative.
As always with this author’s novels the writing is excellent and obviously well researched. The account of the people involved in this tragedy included at the end of the novel enhanced my read immensely. For anyone interested in learning a little social history whilst enjoying a novel, this is a compelling thriller.
Links to Previous Reviews : Room The Wonder The Pull of the Stars Haven Learned By Heart
Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:
Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.
Author Profile:
© Una Roulston 2021.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, she is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). She moved to England, and in 1997 received her PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, she has earned her living as a writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with Chris Roulston and their son Finn and daughter Una.
Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.
Emma Donoghue - Official Website Twitter Profile. Facebook Profile
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