The London Train - Hardcover

Hadley, Tessa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224090976 ISBN 13: 9780224090971

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2011

Synopsis

The London Train is a novel in two parts, separate but wound together around a single moment, examining in vivid detail two lives stretched between two cities. Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. The day after his mother dies he learns that his eldest daughter Pia, who was living with his ex-wife in London, has moved out from home and gone missing. He sets out in search of Pia, and when he eventually finds her, living with her lover in a chaotic flat in a tower block in King's Cross, he thinks at first he wants to rescue her. But the search for his daughter begins a period of unrest and indecision for Paul: he is drawn closer to the hub of London, to the excitements of a life lived in jeopardy, to Pia's fragile new family. Paul's a pessimist; when a heat wave scorches the capital week after week he fears that they are all 'sleep-walking to the edge of a great pit, like spoiled trusting children'.

In the opposite direction, Cora is moving 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. At work in the local library, she is interrupted by a telephone call from her sister-in-law and best friend, to say that her husband has disappeared.

Connecting both stories is the London train, and a chance meeting that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for both Paul and for Cora.

The London Train is a vivid and absorbing account of the impulses and accidents that can shape our lives, alongside our ideas; about loyalty, love,sex and the complicated bonds of friends and family. Penetrating, perceptive, and wholly absorbing, it is an extraordinary new novel from one of the best writers working in Britain today.

About this title

Review:

`Darkly elegant...Hadley writes with grace and intensity, moving from careful, beautiful delineation of character and place...to moments of haunting power. She is brilliant, too, at offering us different perspectives' --Financial Times, December 13, 2010

`This beautifully evoked fourth novel is a further example of her talents' -- Literary Review, December 6, 2010

`By far the most interesting feature of Tessa Hadley's carefully sculpted novel is the way she enters so completely into her characters' private worlds of thought and action. The minds of Paul and Cora are so fully occupied by this most astute and sympathetic of writers, that the reader hardly questions their weirdest and least wise moves' --Guardian Review, January 7, 2011

`admirably concise and attentively detailed' --Sunday Times, January 7, 2011

`There is nothing rushed about Tessa Hadley's prose. The story unfurls gradually with an acute eye for humour, human foibles and emotional detail. Her writing is as deft as her story is compelling' --Easy Living, January 7, 2011

`Tessa Hadley's reputation has soared lately, The London Train shows why.' --Conde Nast Traveller, January 7, 2011

`The plot is nothing out of the ordinary, but the way she tells it is remarkable - so much so that you feel you're observing the lives of real people... The two halves of this novel are beautifully woven together; place bets now for the Orange prize' --The Times, January 7, 2011

`I would count this asymmetry among the novel's more mature virtues, which include absolute lack of predictability and scrupulous sincerity' --The Obeserver, January 11, 2011

`Hadley's strength lies in her characterisation...With characters like these Hadley makes us wonder what forms our own darkness takes' --Time Out, January 11, 2011

`Paul is utterly convincing, selfish, despicable, yet somehow likeable...it's an excellent, absorbing read' --Daily Mail, January 11, 2011

Book Description:

A compelling and beautifully written new novel from the acclaimed Tessa Hadley: a remarkable portrayal of a man and woman whose lives collide on the Cardiff to London train.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0224090976
• ISBN 13: 9780224090971
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336