Book info

• Title The Paris Express
• Author Emma Donoghue
• Year 2025
• Genre Historical

Paris, 1895. One morning, a young woman boards the Granville Express with a deadly plan. On the journey lives intertwine in explosive ways. There are the railway crew who have everything to lose, a little boy travelling alone for the first time, an elderly statesman with his fragile wife and a lonely artist far from home. The train speeds towards the City of Light and into a future that will change everything...

Thoughts

This is a really well written book but I’m not sure it grabbed me 100%. It tells the story of one train journey, an express into Paris that factually crashed once it got there. The rest is fiction based in reality, and follows all the different characters on the train in the various different classes - what drives them, what journey they are on, and how they interact. It was interesting and got more so towards the end, but it felt like a little bit of a slog to get there.

Rating: 3 / 5