The London Train
  • Published: 6 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407086514
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

The London Train

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Mar 2012
EBook
6 Jan 2011
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From the author of The Past, Tessa Hadley’s 4th novel now re-jacketed for a whole new audience


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
  • Published: 6 January 2011
  • ISBN: 9781407086514
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

About the author

Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl and The Past, and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and other magazines.

portrait photo of Tessa Hadley

Also by Tessa Hadley

The Party
After the Funeral
Free Love
Late in the Day
Bad Dreams and Other Stories
The Past
Clever Girl
See all

Praise for The London Train

The London Train is an intelligent and gently manipulative story of human weakness and lies... Wicked but delightful

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

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

Excellent

Philip Hensher, Observer, Books of the Year

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure

Zadie Smith

Hadley has crafted real excitement...The London Train snaps shut with an effective twist

Susanna Rustin, Guardian

Hadley is a writer whose antennae are almost indecently attuned to the interior static of private lives

Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Hadley offers first-class views on the psychological scenery of 21st-century Britain

Daily Telegraph

Hadley's shrewd observation gains in distinction with every book she writes

Independent

Hadley's writing is pin sharp

Rosemary Goring, Sunday Herald

Serene style and carefully constructed scenes

Alex Clark, Times Literary Review

She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today

Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

Tessa Hadley is a writer whose antennae are almost indecently attuned to the interior static of private lives.

Emma Hagestadt, Independent

Tessa Hadley is an understated writer whose concentration on the details of everyday life belies a breathtaking acuity and articulateness... She once again visualizes the monochrome mundanity of ordinary existence in glorious Technicolor... Hadley captures shades of almost imperceptible grey that the reader only recognizes after reading... Hadley shows, with dizzying aplomb, that the distinction between "literary" fiction and the best domestic fiction is spurious.

Leyla Sani, Independent

This beautifully evoked fourth novel is a further example of her talents

Rachel Hore, Literary Review

This concise novel also offers a sharp portrait of modern Britain

Peter Parker, Sunday Times
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