Trains and Lovers: A Novel [Paperback]

As they journey by rail from Edinburgh to London, four strangers pass the time by sharing tales of trains that have changed their lives. A keen-eyed Scotsman recounts how he turned a friendship with a coworker into a romance by spotting an anachronistic train in an eighteenth-century painting. An Australian woman shares how her parents fell in love and spent their life together running a railroad siding in the remote Outback. A middle-aged American patron of the arts sees two young men saying goodbye in a train station and recalls his own youthful crush on another man. And a young Englishman describes how exiting his train at the wrong station allowed him to meet an intriguing woman whom he impulsively invited to dinner-and into his life.
 
Here is Alexander McCall Smith at his most subtle and enchanting, exploring the nature of love—and trains—in this utterly captivating story.
 

“The best thing McCall Smith has written so far. . . . He is a virtuoso storyteller.” —The Scotsman

Four strangers--seated together by chance on a train from Edinburgh to London--strike up a conversation and share their stories with one another. Grade: A- --Entertainment Weekly

“Wise and witty.” —Booklist
 
“A warm, understated serving of comfort food.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Both disarming and deeply affecting. . . . That four strangers should meet and tell such compelling stories is highly unlikely, but such is McCall Smith’s ability to draw us into his kindly world, [where] disbelief is more than willingly suspended.” —Sydney Morning Herald

“Their stories envelop us, each in its own way—we can smell the dust of the Outback and hear the gentle lap of waves against a rowboat—and they resist reducing emotion to platitudes. Love doesn’t always end happily, but even then it canló2