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*This book has been kindly given to me pre-publication via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*
Midnight Train to Prague by Carol Windley is a post-Bolshevik Revolution and after World War One novel following the life of Natalia Faber. After discovering that the man who died on a train was her father, her life becomes unintentionally twined with the doctor on the train who attempted to save her father. The book follows Natalia from this event onwards, dealing with family illness, romance and, later, the horrors of the Second World War. Reading through the lens of Natalia, the themes of loss, love and family drive the story forward.
This book was, sadly, one of the most difficult to read books of this year, mainly because of how dry and slow the narrative is. When it comes to the central events of the novel, the author seems to underplay them, briefly mentioning them but then going into detail on the smallest of matters that prove to be unimportant to the overall plot.
To add to this, her writing style can often lead to confusion, as I often found myself having to re-read paragraphs and re-calibrate myself. From a reader’s perspective, I would argue the book needed a bit more of a purpose and more fore-thought in the plot to move the story from beginning to end, because instead it felt jittery and not thought through.
In terms of the characters, the protagonist projects herself as boring and hollow, with her presence bearing no real purpose other than to be the central thread that ties the story together. Having this important of a role in a story as the protagonist, I would have liked Natalia to have had more flavour. Instead, side characters like her mother Beatriz and friend Zita seem to take the limelight more, even though their stories eb and flow. These characters, along with Rozalia, while somewhat annoying, dominated the story much more than the protagonist did. I think I would’ve preferred if there were less characters surrounding Natalia and more emphasis on shaping who Natalia was and what her purpose in the novel was.
As another thing to quickly mention, I thought some of the descriptions of the time period felt very out of touch with the reality, as the characters were eating well-cooked meals and living a relatively happy life, and then are suddenly catapulted into the realities of war. The problem I found was that the extent of World War Two only seemed to reach them in 1942, adding to the carelessness of the writing. As a history student, I would place these novels in the category of ‘Historical Fiction Novels Who Miss the Mark’, alongside The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas.
Finally, the ending of the book felt slightly rushed and pressed for time, and ended on a rather unremarkable note, not even focusing on the protagonist, merely adding to the idea that Natalia was a jumping board for other characters to outshine her.
Overall, this book was rather unremarkable and not one I would recommend to many. The lack of overall theme and the little to no driving force in the novel, as well as unlikable characters and a protagonist who didn’t feel like a protagonist, made for a disappointing experience. I expected a lot more from this novel.
Rating: ⭐⭐/5