Two people meet on a train and despite not sharing a language recognize the desperation in each other and form a bond. Aliocha is a teenage conscript headed for a Siberian training camp with his troop. Desperate to escape before reaching his destination, he turns to a foreign woman for help. Hélène had come to Siberia with her lover, but boards the Trans-Siberian train one night with only one thought—escape. As the train moves relentlessly onward toward the east, the tension mounts between the protagonists and between them and the world.

This small novel is incredibly well-crafted. From the start I was drawn in and became increasingly anxious for Aliocha. It was a little harder to inhabit Hélène's mind, as her motivations are not as well-drawn, but the relationship between the two highlights a shared humanity that I found moving. I couldn't put the book down and finished it in a single sitting. Highly recommended. ( )

A slim, elegant novella. Loved this book from the first line. ( )

This story of a Russian conscript who decides to desert while on the train taking him to basic training and eventually to fight in Ukraine was originally published in France in 2012 during the last war on Ukraine. Sadly it is as timely now as it was a decade ago.

Aliosha was too timid to find a way out of service, but now aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad the reality of what lays before him, the indecency of his fellow conscripts and the cruelty of the Russian military becomes his reality. He realizes he has no choice but to disappear somewhere in the vastness of Siberia. He enlists the assistance of a French woman escaping her own untenable situation, by instilling sympathy and fear in equal measure. This is their story.

The writing in this novella is beautiful (it is translated from French so I can only speak to the English version) and deKerangal is masterful in creating a sense of fear, desperation, and urgency that turns this pivotal moment between strangers into a sort of thriller. ( )

Ain’t got no cigarettes…

Media: Audio
Read by Jennifer Pickens
Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins

The central character in this brilliant novella is the train. In what appears to be a never-ending journey, it doggedly winds its way east from Moscow to Vladivostok. Aliocha and Helene are two of the passengers on the ride that takes place in post Soviet Russia.

Aliocha a young Russian conscript and Helene is a slightly older French woman. They are strangers when they meet on the train when Aliocha is trying to desert. Helene becomes his accomplice. The tension is high for both and for the reader, as the train moves east and the probability of Aliocha being able to stay hidden until he can make a break from it, increases.

The pair have no common language and are reluctantly entwined, together in a fragile shell. The Siberian landscape is their moving background.

It’s a gripping tale that covers a very short time period, a few days. A lot happens and like Aliocha the reader loses all sense of time. Seven days becomes an hour, a minute, but at the same time the trip appears to be unending.

What sets this book apart from other books I’ve read in the past two years is the beauty of its prose. The reader is put firmly into the train with Aliocha and Helene and the Provodnitsy. The imagery that bounces from train windows as in a shattered film sequence is depicted in unfaltering detail. I was amazed at the skill that was evident in Jessica Moore’s translation. There were times that I couldn’t help but try to translate back into French to experience how the sentences would sound in their original language.

Helene and Aliocha sleep, eat, and smoke cigarettes. As an ex-smoker I related to de Kerangal’s detailed description of the cigarettes. From the cheap cardboard filters to the packaging and the associated cravings. I noticed that cigarettes played a large part in Kerangal’s other novel The Heart. She’s must be a smoker. The pleasure of smoking oozed back into my memory as I tried to slow my reading, not wanting the train to reach the final stop and the book to end.

Highly recommended. ( )

Lyrical, dream-like, French. ( )