The London Train by Tessa Hadley

The London Train by Tessa Hadley

In this New York Times Notable Book from one of today's most acclaimed writers, two lives stretched between two cities converge in a chance meeting that will irrevocably change their lives.

"Hadley is a supremely perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence, someone who goes well beyond surfaces." --New York Times Book Review

Unsettled by the recent death of his mother, Paul sets out in search of Pia, his daughter from his first marriage, who has disappeared into the labyrinth of London. Discovering her pregnant and living illegally in a run-down council flat with a pair of Polish siblings, Paul is entranced by Pia's excitement at living on the edge. Abandoning his second wife and their children in Wales, he joins her to begin a new life in the heart of London.

Cora, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction, 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. But there is a deeper reason why she cannot stay with her decent Civil Service husband; the aftershocks of which she hasn't fully come to terms with herself.

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

Tessa Hadley is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including Clever Girl and The Past, as well as three short-story collections, the most recent of which won the Edge Hill Short Story Award, Bad Dreams and Other Tales. Her pieces have been published in The New Yorker on a regular basis, and she was awarded the Windham Campbell Award and the Hawthornden Prize in 2016. She is based in London.