Midnight Train to Prague

September 14, 2020
In Windley’s enthralling epic (after the collection Breathing Under Water), a chance meeting on a train leads to a bond between two women decades later. Fourteen-year-old Natalia Faber and her mother, Beatriz, leave their home near Berlin in 1927 to visit a spa in Hungary. Natalia watches a man dying on their train as a young doctor, Magdalena Schaefferova, tries to save him. While staying at the spa, Beatriz meets Miklós Andorján, a budding journalist, and the next year they are married. In 1942, Miklós goes east to Russia on an assignment, and Natalia goes to Prague to find him. While in Prague, Natalia makes a meager living telling fortunes, gets reacquainted with Magdalena, and meets Magdalena’s daughter, Anna, before Natalia is sent to a concentration camp as a political prisoner. After her camp is liberated, Natalia reunites with Anna and continues the search for Miklós, while Anna reckons with the effects of the war on her own family. The author skillfully conveys the political and social upheaval in WWII-era Europe through the perspectives of journalists, soldiers, and doctors. Fans of WWII fiction will appreciate this accomplished take.

September 15, 2020
A 1927 train journey from Berlin to Prague becomes a pivotal life-changing experience for a wealthy German widow and her daughter in award-winning Canadian author Windley's first novel since Breathing Under Water (1998). Sixteen-year-old Natalia Faber is pulled out of her convent boarding school to serve as her idiosyncratic and narcissist mother Beatriz's traveling companion. When their train to Prague is delayed by a flooded branch line, Natalia volunteers to watch the young son of Czech doctor Magdalena Schaefferov� as she attends a sick passenger. Later arriving at a spa on the shore of Lake H�v�z in Hungary, the Fabers meet Mikl�s Andorj�n, a Hungarian count and journalist, and his on-again, off-again love interest, Zita Kuznetsova, whom Natalia recognizes as the occupants of a speeding blue car she had admired from the train. Not long after, the impulsive Beatriz takes off with Zita for the Dalmatian coast. Out of this inauspicious beginning, a romance between Natalia and Mikl�s eventually blossoms, and they marry, splitting their time between Berlin and a rural Hungarian estate. But World War II separates them when Mikl�s heads to Russia to report on the Eastern Front. Believing her husband's promise that they would reunite in Prague in the spring of 1942, Natalia goes there to wait for him and meets Anna, the 13-year-old daughter of Dr. Schaefferov�. Both get caught up in the brutality of the Nazi occupation. Like Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, Windley's ambitious novel, switching points of view among Natalia, Anna, and, briefly, Mikl�s, vividly captures the devastating losses that war inflicts on ordinary people. But in trying to cover so much history across three different countries, it also feels crammed with too many contrived coincidences and sketchily drawn people (a cast of characters to keep track of all these secondary players would have been helpful). A flawed but haunting and beautifully detailed story of love, loss, and survival during some of history's darkest hours.

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October 1, 2020

A fateful 1927 train journey with her mother introduces Natalia to several people who will be influential in her life, including a female doctor called to assist a sick man and a dashing motorist whom Natalia spies from the train window. She soon learns the motorist is Miklos Count Andorjan, a journalist who also owns a large estate in Hungary. Marriage to Miklos allows Natalia a welcome escape from her flighty, immature mother, but the arrival of World War II forces Natalia and Miklos apart. When her path crosses in Prague with that of the doctor's young daughter, Anna, the two women's stories intertwine. VERDICT In her second novel (following 1998's Breathing Underwater and two story collections), Canadian writer Windley delivers well-researched descriptions of daily life in 1920s-40s Eastern Europe that will appeal to readers who enjoy immersive scene setting. The number of characters and the frequent jumps between them give the book a slightly crowded feel that is particularly noticeable in the first half, but the second half is more consistently engaging. Recommended for those readers who can't get enough of World War II historical fiction, particularly for those interested in civilians' experiences in Eastern Europe.--Mara Bandy Fass, Champaign P.L., IL

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