All Aboard: Riding the Rails in Fiction

For many of us, trains are fascinating: cargo and passenger trains, subways, high-speed rail. The call of a train whistle--the rumbling, chugging sound--awakens the spirit and encourages the imagination to crisscross time and place. That's what inspired me to write In Transit, a woman-in-jeopardy novel published two years ago. It's the story of a misguided, rookie NYPD transit cop assigned to the labyrinthine New York City subway system and how, when she falls in love with the wrong man, her life derails.

In Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith, four travelers, diverse in backgrounds and ages, are brought together on a train bound from Edinburgh to London. They pass the time by telling tales of how the railroad played a significant part in each of their love lives.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline is a coming-of-age novel that connects the disparate lives of two women. The story is based on the program that, from the 19th century until the Great Depression, carted orphans via train to adoptive families in the Midwest.

Pandemonium infuses Mrs. Queen Takes the Train. In William Kuhn's clever, inventive novel, Queen Elizabeth gets fed up with the demands of life at Buckingham Palace, slips on a borrowed hoodie and goes rogue, taking public rail transportation to Scotland.

The Train of Small Mercies, a collection of short stories by David Rowell, links the poignant, personal experiences of six ordinary people who witness and grieve as the train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy from New York City to his final resting place in Washington, D.C.

The idea of riding the rails conjures romance, intrigue and drama as trains take us on collective and individual journeys--both on the page and off. 

NOTE: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this column as published via Shelf Awareness for Readers (11/5/13), link HERE

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train

Her Majesty, The Queen of England, is depressed. She reads biographies about  The Royals and writes "Not true" or "Never happened" in the margins. To keep calm and fit and rail against aging, she takes up yoga and even tries to learn the computer. But nothing can dissuade her sadness over her children's marriages breaking up, the death of Princess Diana, the fire at Windsor castle and other woes. The Queen had "internalized the shock, stored it up, and now she was suffering," writes William Kuhn in Mrs. Queen Takes the Train, an affecting, yet amusing, fictitious look at the heart and soul of Queen Elizabeth.

When the Prime Minister informs that the government can no longer subsidize the Royal Train--an outdated, expensive mode of transportation dedicated exclusively for official business of The Monarchy--the 80 year-old Queen is delivered a final jolt. She gets fed up and walks away from Buckingham Palace, unattended, on a rainy day. Cloaked beneath a borrowed hoodie with a skull stenciled on the back, she sets off for King's Cross, London's busiest public train station, and sets off to the Royal Yacht Britannia moored in Scotland. Along the way, she encounters an array of ethnically diverse commoners - some who mistake her for a homeless person, others Helen Mirren.

Orbiting the suspense and excitement that swirls around Her Majesty's mysterious disappearance are engaging stories about the lives of those who work behind the scenes at the palace, those who know Queen Elizabeth best. Kuhn (Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books) delivers a clever, funny send-up mirroring all facets of contemporary British life while portraying The Queen as an emblem of "correctness...in a secular era."

 

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn

Harper, $25.99, Hardcover, 9780871404619,  384 pp

Publication Date: October 16, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/26/12), click HERE.