Genre: Novel
Grade: B+
Notable People: Pascal Mercier
Title: Night Train to Lisbon
Review: after months of reading mysteries and femme fatale/noir novels- I felt guilty and that I needed something challenging and heady. Found this skimming through shelves at local library and…..mission for heady accomplished. Staid and hermetic middle aged man living in Bern, Switzerland and teaching esoteric languages at a small private school….has a chance encounter with a woman ready to jump of a bridge, who hands him a piece of unknown writing from a provocative Lisbon man. Our hero quits his job and goes off to Lisbon to investigate and re-create the life and times of the mysterious dead writer- Amadeus Prado. This book is DEEP…I found ten pages at a time were max for me (it’s a long 500 pager) . But I found myself more and more drawn into this bizarre search for meaning that Gregorius undertakes…the totally immersed search to understand fully another person and connect with them beyond the grave. Very intricately written and very well translated from the German. You gotta have time to read this one.