A review by kurtwombat
Night Train by Martin Amis

5.0

I should have known from previous Martin Amis reading not to expect formula. NIGHT TRAIN comes at you like a police procedural. The narrator is no non-sense, tough as nails—no life but the job. The facts of the case are laid out—appears to be a suicide but has to be a murder because it’s a procedural and immediately suspects are brought into focus. But at every procedural turn, expectations unravel. The characters are not empty dolls to be pushed through a by the numbers plot. The “crime” is a big splash in a small pond and each character feels the ripples in their own way. And as happens in life, those ripples don’t stop until reaching the farthest shore. We depart the procedural altogether when the focus swings from those who might have been involved in the crime to the victim herself. Just like the story references that there are many different versions of Night Train, there are many different ways to view a life. The point of NIGHT TRAIN is the only perspective that matters is our own. The mystery of any action is wrapped up in the actor. We never know from the outside if that person is looking up from the bottom of a well, looking down into a well or lives in a world without wells. Marvelous ending where an oblique novel attains a kind of oblivion.