The Train to Paris



Over the weekend, I read Sebastian Hampson's debut novel 'The Train to Paris'. The premise of the novel was appealing: a young traveller (Lawrence) meets a French woman (Elodie) at a train station and his plans to get back to Paris are delayed; an adventure unfolds. The front cover has a wintry, black and white image, a scene from the end of the novel, one assumes after reading. It was only when I got home that I read about the author, a New Zealander born in 1992; at this point the aging author in me became both jealous and suspicious - a combination of the worst traits of Lawrence and Elodie, perhaps. I read the first few pages and began to scoff at the unlikely meeting and the stereotypes of the French. I kept reading, however, and found the novel engaging on a number of levels. First, the dialogue and relationship between the two characters and the shady third wheel, an American pornographer named Ed, was engaging and true to itself. The settings were well imagined, on the whole, particularly the fading opulence of the Biarritz hotel and the dingy apartment Lawrence returns to in Paris and shares with his musician friend, Ethan. In terms of plot, there was enough fear and suspicion in Lawrence's first sexual encounter to balance the erotic moments (which I think have been well handled and I imagine, well edited). I expected worse from Elodie - but perhaps Hampson's restraint here was well-advised (my own thinking would have taken her into a darker world more directly than is hinted at here). Altogether, I found the novel engaging and crisply-written and imagine on this evidence that this young New Zealander will go on to write many more published novels. Part of the effect of the novel is that it does make you think about your own travels and inspire an immediate sort of nostalgia for the past and lost youth. I hope Lawrence doesn't end up as Elodie teases: married with kids in the suburbs of Auckland, a lawyer who has given up his artistic dreams. One imagines perhaps not.

There is an interesting tradition of young Australian novelists (and perhaps New Zealand writers; I am only aware of this one) writing about sexual encounters in Europe, with backgrounds in the antipodes, these characters are often in search of something in themselves and torn between the authentic but safe former-self and the possibilities of the new (a sort of European artistic decadence). I am thinking here of a few examples on my own bookshelf (Rod Jones' Nightpictures set in Venice, with much darker tones; Larry Buttrose's The Maze of the Muse set in Barcelona in the time of Franco; Julian Davies The Boy, set in Paris and New York; Michael Meehan's Deception, a novel with an historic premise but the same sort of discovering young artist character. On a different level and written in a different time, Henry Handel Richardson's Maurice Guest is an early and still wonderful prototype: a provincial musician from England in love with an Australian in Leipzig but in the shadow of both European culture and the genius of a German composer and pianist.

The European cities of these novels pit the young protagonist against new and sometimes dangerous experience; they are about the sort of new understandings of self that come from travels beyond a visit to the local Westfield or its equivalent. And for this reason (let alone any more complex cultural readings) they have my interest, perhaps especially as an Australian traveller and writer who has lived overseas and returned home to tell the tale but found it difficult to do so in any normal, conversational sense. People don't want to hear about your travels. A novel with an intriguing premise, on the other hand, allows the reader to recall and converse with that most open of listeners - the inner ear of the writer's lingering voice.

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