The Paris Express draws inspiration from the infamous 1895 train crash at Montparnasse station, where a steam engine crashed through the station wall and landed on the street. The novel follows the passengers and crew on their journey from Normandy to Paris, blending real and fictional characters. While their stories are captivating, Donoghue’s brief treatment of each character offers more of a sketch than a fully realized narrative.

Though rich in atmosphere and historical detail, The Paris Express lacks a clear purpose, feeling more like a snapshot of a moment in time than a fully developed story.

I found the premise of this novel very appealing in the style of Murder of the Orient Express, but while written in lovely prose, the vast array of characters meant I lost interest early on - not for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

Emma Donoghue is clearly a hugely talented writer, but this book just didn't really do it for me.

I think my issue with it was in the huge cast of characters who were never really given their individual chances to shine (with the exception of Mado Pelletier). I ended up getting many of them mixed up in my head, and they all just blurred together. This led to my not really caring about them, which is an issue in a story where their lives are at risk.

Having said this, the setting is interesting, and I always enjoy a story that is based on a real event. I also enjoyed the commentaries on class, sexuality and politics that ran throughout the story, and the insights into the history of the time. Emma Donoghue has clearly done a huge amount of background research for this novel, but the end result just felt a little rushed.

Mado Pelletier as an angry young anarchist is a very strong character though. I enjoyed following her thought processes as the train journey progressed, but I just wanted more of that. I may have preferred hearing the story purely from her point of view (maybe alternating with a member of the crew).

The list of characters at the end of the book and what became of them is a nice touch.

DNF. I struggled with this one. What had promised a lot of intrigue was really a lot of set-up and you wonder what really was the purpose of writing a novel in this way, about this particular event. I have read Emma Donoghue in the past - I inhaled 'Room' like the rest of the world - and yet, when I try to pick up her more recent books, I really struggle to get into them or to care much about what is on the page. The novel has a very scattered approach, never quite wanting to stay with anyone too long or explore too deeply. And it's difficult to care about the background of a character if you're never going to spend more than a surface level amount of time with them. The story dragged and, even when I switched to the audiobook, I couldn't keep my focus.

This novel which is very well researched takes as its springboard the 1895 derailment of an express train at Montparnasse. We are introduced to a cast of passengers and crew as the train begins its journey from Granville and each chapter has us arriving and leaving the various stations en route. There are the politicians and their families in first class and a wide mix in third class. There is a child making the journey for the first time on his own to meet his father at the other end, there is a Russian maid servant returning from a restorative break and even a young anarchist who is determined that she will blow up the train. For me there were too many characters and I wasn’t really able to get under their skin. They didn’t affect me. There is some tension because you do know that the train does derail and you do wonder who survives. What I did like was the afterword when the author gives us her thought processes for choosing the passengers from the historical passenger list and from other historical persons from that time.

This was a 3.5 star book for me, I’m slightly disappointed because I expected a bit more after having really loved her “Pull of the Stars.” but this one did not grab me quite as much. My major and most significant complaint is just that the pacing was super slow and it was really difficult to get invested initially as it felt like things dragged on and onfor a good while. I think this book needed a better and more proactive editor who would have cut all the access wordage out which would have changed the entire feel of the book into something less drawn out.

I was not a fan of the claustrophobic feel of the one train car setting with the large cast of characters, but the fact that this was based on a real event rescued me from utter annoyance. Also Emma Donahue’s writing is always top-notch and her writing in itself catapult the story into three star territory. I have loved several of her books but others have been Mrs., she has a tendency of overriding, but the ones I have loved I have loved very much so I will continue to read her books.

The Paris Express is a wonderful blend of historical intrigue and character-driven storytelling that captivates from the very first page. Set against the backdrop of the infamous 1895 Montparnasse train crash, Emma Donoghue crafts a narrative that is both thrilling and deeply human.

The novel introduces us to a diverse ensemble of passengers aboard the express train from Granville to Paris. From the fiery young anarchist Mado to the pioneering female medical student Marcelle, each character is meticulously drawn, reflecting the rich tapestry of society at the time. Real-life figures like Émile and Louise Sarazin-Levassor, pioneers of the motorcar industry, and the Dior family add authenticity and depth to the story. Donoghue’s ability to intertwine these lives, exploring themes of race, sexuality, and class, is nothing short of remarkable.

The pacing mirrors the train’s own journey—starting leisurely as we become acquainted with the passengers, then accelerating into a gripping crescendo as disaster looms. This structure keeps readers on the edge of their seats, fully immersed in the unfolding drama.

Donoghue’s meticulous research shines through, painting a vivid picture of late 19th-century France and how steam teains of the day operated. The authenticity of the setting, combined with the depth of character exploration, makes the historical context come alive, allowing readers to feel the societal tensions and technological advancements of the era.

The Paris Express is more than just a historical novel; it’s a reflection on human interconnectedness and the choices we make under pressure. Donoghue’s narrative invites readers to ponder the complexities of fate, ambition, and societal change. It’s a testament to her storytelling prowess that these themes resonate so profoundly.

In conclusion, The Paris Express is a compelling journey through time, rich with emotion and insight. Emma Donoghue has once again delivered a novel that is both thought-provoking and utterly unputdownable. Whether you’re a fan of historical fiction or simply love a well-told story, this book is a must-read. Reading on a train or in France highly recommneded too.

I probably have to admit that I’m having suspicions that I’m turning into a lazy reader. So as such this many character and many background stories just proved too much.
Then afterword ( and I usually love reading the authors comments) proved as long winded as the book.
Very loosely based on a real event but too much of a jumble of real and imagined. Not one for me.

Emma Donoghue’s latest historical novel takes its inspiration from a famous photograph of a train crash at Montparnasse station in 1895. In the photo a steam engine has ploughed through the wall of the upper level of Montparnasse train station and sits nose first on the road. The story of The Paris Express is that of the passengers and crew of that train, some real, many imagined and their journey to Paris. And while some of the large cast of characters are interesting it is really unclear what Donoghue is trying to achieve with this novel other than just provide her own snapshot of a particular time and place.
The narrative of The Paris Express follows the train from its embarkation in Normandy through to Paris. The authorial eye ranges over the crew and the passengers from third class through to first class. Only a handful of these was known to actually be on the train, many of the others are real historical figures who Donoghue imagines onto the train in order to explore their milieu. This includes a performer called Annah Lamor who was also one of Gaugin’s muses, Fulgence Bienvenüe who came up with the idea for the Paris Metro, an anarchist called Mado, and Alice Guy who went on to be one of the first film directors. This is just a small selection of the huge cast that move through the narrative. Their stories are in and of themselves interesting but Donoghue dips in and out of their lives too briefly to get any more than a character sketch.
In the end The Paris Express, while interesting and packed with foreboding, does not amount to much. Donoghue herself admits, in a lengthy Afterword which talks about the backgrounds of the actual and potential passengers, that the accident was so minor (only one person died and it was not anyone on the train, and the train was back in service a few weeks later) that it was not even recorded in an annual report on the Railways. Historical fiction does not necessarily have to have a point, but so many of Donoghue’s other historical books (Haven, The Wonder, Learned By Heart) are invest deeply in the characters and are all so thematically rich that this effort seems the poorer as a result.

I love the way that Emma Donohue takes a real event & puts her spin on it. There are a lot of characters which is confusing but the writing draws you in.

In Emma Donoghue's "The Paris Express," she takes the real-life French railway disaster as her inspiration for a multi-character thriller/historical fiction. Donoghue assembles these characters (from various walks of life) to show how the disaster impacted everyone. She examines the disaster through an economic and sociological lens which may sound a bit dry, but it's fascinating to explore this event from all angles.

If there is a downside, it's that there are a lot of characters, and it can be a bit difficult at times to keep track of them. I would have preferred fewer characters. I enjoyed the book as a snapshot of another time, and as a recreation of an often-forgotten railway disaster.

I love a book based on a true story that gives you an insight not only into the event it covers itself but also into the time period it is set in. This is one of those books.

Emma has used a train crash in Paris in 1895 as inspiration for this novel. We follow the train’s journey from its starting point of Granville all the way through to its destination in Paris and we meet plenty of characters along the way. The book gives an insight not only into what a train journey at the time would have been like and the operations of one and of the stations it passed through but also of France in general. It hints at the general unrest in the country, at the change in the air and tells of the different social levels in the society.

I will admit I struggled with the different characters and the changes of scenes from carriage to carriage. This may, however, be due to the fact that I only had a digital proof and sometimes lay outs aren’t as clear as in printed versions. This made the story a bit disjointed for me but I finished the book as I was invested in the story and wanted to see it through to the end. I found the final section covering the actual event and the real life characters a great addition to give a fuller picture of the basis for the story.

Any reader familiar with Emma Donoghue’s remarkable dedication to historical research (seventh-century monks colonising Skellig Michael in ‘Haven’, anyone?) will not be surprised that she is delivering, as her latest novel, nearly 300 pages set entirely in one place (the engine and carriages of a speeding train) in its historical setting (1895, France) and that the action takes place exclusively within a seven-and-a-half-hour timeframe (just as she had done with three days in a Dublin maternity ward during the 1918 Spanish ‘flu epidemic in ‘The Pull of the Stars’).

In this latest, a commentary on fin-de-siècle social change, every one of the characters she introduces is vivid, technicoloured right up till the novel’s end. I found it easy – as always – to connect to all of Donoghue’s cast. It was only the excerpts from the perspective of the train engine that didn’t have me fully on-board (pun intended):

‘Engine 721 doesn’t take it personally. She is made of wood and metal, and her temperament is stoic. Besides, she recognises something kindred in Mado Petellier’s iron conviction and unstoppable momentum. The bomber believes the world men have made is terrible, and so it is. Nor can the train deny that there is a certain beauty in the idea of burning, since she runs on flame herself.’

There is great tension created over Mado’s radicalism, and the conclusion tears towards us from the opening words, since we know how this is going to end. That brutal picture still comes upon you at the close with a gulp!

‘That lunch bucket is an explosion waiting to happen. Its unstable elements sing out their longing so loudly, the train can hear them like a battle cry. All the force of combustion that makes an express the fastest vehicle on earth, this device has harnessed for instant havoc. It can take every part of an object, and every cell in the human body, and fire them in different directions.’

I realise there’s real history being dealt with, here, but I felt as little need to go and fact-check and verify her content as I did to Google Anne Lister’s relationships whilst reading ‘Learned by Heart’ (the novel that perhaps marks my reading high point as an Emma Donoghue enthusiast).

All in all, ‘The Paris Express’ made me gasp, smile, frown, jump, and sigh. All the best reactions, to one of my favourite authors.
My thanks go to Pan Macmillan for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

This is a good solid read, there is nothing deep or thought provoking about it but it is none the worse for that.

There is a fairly large cast of characters on the train but they are varied and, without exception, interesting. It was great to recognise some of them, pre fame such as J M Synge, and the Gaumont company. One of the characters has a tutor described as an austere Polish woman called Mme Curie!

Like the train, the story rattles along at a great pace. I enjoyed all the characters and their stories. I didn't get any characters mixed up, there was no repetition in their stories and it was a very entertaining read. I didn't actually realise until the very good afterword that the story is based on a real event.

There is perhaps a bit too much information about how a steam train works but I just skipped that.

Whilst I’m normally a big fan of this writer, I have to admit this book did not quite hit the mark for me. Based on an actual historical event, the story of a derailed express train certainly holds a lot of potential, but where it falls flat is the multitude of narratives (too many characters to keep track of, resulting in very little investment) that touch on the many lives onboard the train, but never really goes into depth with anyone. Had the characters’ stories been afforded the same level of detail as the endless descriptions of various train mechanisms, I’m sure it would left a more lasting impression. Whilst it’s clear the author has researched the setting meticulously, I didn’t care about the train as much as I did its passengers, and I just didn’t get enough about any of them to care. Whilst written beautifully, it is nonetheless a quick read, and not worth more than 3 stars.

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5 stars
Publication date: 20th March 2025

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It is 1895. A high-speed steam train is the emblem of progress. Industry and invention are creating ever greater wealth and poverty. One autumn day an anarchist boards the Granville to Paris Express.

I enjoyed this so much! This was well-written, propulsive (quite literally) and I couldn't put it down.
This book has a huge cast of characters, and multiple POVs that we cycle through quite swiftly - which can sometimes make it tricky to remember who's who. In this train, Emma Donoghue creates a microcosm of society, from the elite in their private carriage to the people crammed in third class. There was some interesting societal commentary about the political unrest in France at the time, and the train itself (or “herself” as Engine 721 is personalised throughout the book) is a symbol of the rapid industrialisation across the country.
As the train hurtles through the French countryside, we spend a little moment in time with all those passengers - we learn about their lives, loves, hopes, desires, despair and anger - whilst in the background, Donoghue subtly and skillfully ramps the tension up.
This book is based on a real-life event and (some) real-life characters - as such, the author’s notes are well worth reading for some fascinating history and context.

'The Paris Express' is Emma Donoghue's latest historical fiction novel. It is referring to the Montparnasse train disaster on 22.10.1895, where the fast steam train from Granville to Paris couldn't break in time and crashed through the Montparnasse train station wall.

In the novel we meet various characters who travel on the train to Paris, amongst them politicians, a pregnant woman, an anarchist and a painter. Whereas the travellers and workmen are well presented and give a great snapshot of French society at the end of the 19th century, it feels a little convoluted as there were too many characters without enough depth.

There was also a lot of technical information and detail about steam trains which I did enjoy. It showed how much research Emma Donoghue has put into her novel.

As always I enjoyed her writing but I found the book slow to get into. However in the last third it picked up the pace as the train workers struggled to avoid the inevitable.

It is a well researched and well written work of historical fiction.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for thr ARC.

If you love steam trains, quirky French characters and stories set around the fin de siècle, you might just love Emma Donoghue’s latest work The Paris Express.

While it chugged along for me, I found it too densely packed with detail on steam train engineering and characters whose lives seemed interesting but of whom the reader only getting a fleeting glimpse.

The novel is based on the real-life 1895 train crash of a steam train travelling from Granville to Paris, which was unable to stop as it approached its terminus at Montparnasse and crashed through the railway station wall onto the street outside.

The story is told in vignettes of the passengers’ lives - we meet a politician, a trainee physicist working for Marie Curie, a female anarchist, an unmarried pregnant woman, the train’s driver and stoker, a closeted gay man, Irish writer John Millington Synge, American painter Henry Tanner and many more.

It’s a fascinating at times insight into French life and society in 1895 at the turn of the 19th century, aspects of which were more progressive than in Ireland in 1985! However there is just so much detail on the ins and outs of steam trains and some dull dialogue. The last couple of chapters are thrilling though as the runaway train heads for the end of the line. 3/5 ⭐️

Many thanks to Picador Books for the #gifted advance copy. The Paris Express will be published this week. As always, this is an honest review.

I wanted to like this story but I only managed to get a few chapters in. Netgalley insists I leave a review to keep my rating up

Perhaps the main reason I had this as one of my most anticipated titles for 2025 in my Looking Forward post was my belated discovery last year of this author’s debut “Room” (2010) which knocked me for six and made it into my end of year Top 10.

Since then Emma Donoghue has favoured historical writing (I had previously also really enjoyed her 2016 tale of a potential miracle in nineteenth century Ireland in “The Wonder”) and here she is setting her latest novel in 1895 for a train journey by Engine 721 from Glanville to Paris, a journey scheduled to take just under eight and a half hours.

We know from the start that something is not quite right, there’s a moment of personification early on where the engine itself realises that this trip will end up in death and the narrative builds up towards this.

On one level this can be seen as a thriller which layers the tension on more of a will-they-do-it? basis. One of the passengers is harbouring a resentment that may tip over to violence. The novel is set at a time when Anarchists threatened to destabilise French society so all this feels quite plausible. On another level the novel is a character study of crew and passengers and the history of this period is allowed to shine through these individuals. It was this element that made me think of another Canadian author (Emma Donoghue also now lives in Canada), Suzette Mayr’s “The Sleeping Car Porter” (2023), a historical novel which dealt with the dynamics between a staff member and assorted passengers.

Some are on The Paris Express because of who they will become and what they will go on to do and some were really on this fateful journey. For this is a true event the author is relating but for maximum enjoyment I suggest you don’t look up anything about this, just allow the narrative to unfold and find out what the author has to say about it afterwards.

Good incorporation of history into the fiction, a solid set of characters who we meet again and again at intervals throughout the journey and the build up towards something we are not sure exactly what or how (unless you’ve looked it up) is handled impressively. This author knows how to tell and layer stories and this is another strong novel from her.

The Paris Express is published on 20th March by Picador. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.