The Christmas Train

David Baldacci never disappoints. A
A very good read! This book cries out to be adapted as a screenplay. Warm,amusing and entertainingA brilliant tale

Feel good Christmas book
Billed as a ‘Heart-Warming Holiday Tale’ (‘holiday’ in this instance means Christmas), I looked forward to some light reading over the festive period. And I loved the cover, which shows a steam engine in the snow. Lovely.The story is about a journalist who decides to follow the same ​railway route that Mark Twain did in 1872 and to record the journey. A ‘trip of soul-searching and personal discovery’ from the east to the west of the United States. Plus, everyone is trying to get home for Christmas.Straight away we meet the other passengers, some stereotypes (the star-crossed lovers for one, the aggressive lawyer another) all with their own baggage. There is a down to Earth, plain speaking woman who gives sage advice who could well be an angel. Oh yes, and the love that got away.Throughout, the parallels with Twain’s record are highlighted, which is interesting. The ‘mystery’ element is an on-board thief who steals such items as a pen, sunglasses, a hairbrush and a money clip. With so many lovely people on board it’s hard to guess who the thief might be.Baldacci certainly knows trains and his descriptions are intricate and a little too technical for me. Given the amount of territory he covers I would prefer a bit more detail on the unique landscape. I have practically no idea what the terrain looks like in this part of America. Except for snow, lots and lots of snow.The writing is clear and concise, which is what I would expect from a successful thriller writer. This, however, is romance with Christmas miracles thrown in and, towards the end, a little far-fetched suspense to boot. But hey, it’s Christmas.​Definitely an upbeat, feelgood book, just right for Christmas if taken with plenty of mulled wine and sherry.

brilliant
A truly wonderful book with a gigantic twist at the end. Only Baldicci could bavewritten this. Good time of year to read fhis, Xmas!

Too Sentimental
David Baldacci is a confusing author. I have only recently come across him but have now read several of his books. Some of them are highly competently written and feature reasonably believable characters who tend to be caught up in very dramatic situations. But I have to say that I have read one or two which give the impression of having been written by someone else. They have had cardboard characters whose actions are recorded in dreadfully wooden prose. Perhaps I ought to look into this more closely. It may be, for instance, that the poor books were early ones and that he has been learning on the job.Anyway, what about this one? It is not a thriller in the sense that most of his books (or those I have read) are. It tells of a journey by train from the East to the West of America. Our hero, a journalist, has been banned from travelling by air as a result of a disagreement with security staff at an airport. So he decides this would be an excellent opportunity to recreate Mark Twain’s journey across America and to write about it. And he can combine that with visiting his on-off girlfriend (a fabulously rich “voice over” for various television puppet shows) in California for Christmas. It is clear, however, from an early stage, that he is not really in love with her. He remains besotted by an earlier girlfriend, another journalist, who walked out on him some years earlier.The train turns out to be populated by many larger than life characters to whom we are introduced in turn. Because the story is set in the Christmas season (I assume that is the reason) pretty well all of them have to be portrayed as wonderful people. That said, there is a brief appearance by a stage villain, a lawyer who threatens the bar steward with total ruin unless he is served a drink before the bar opens. But, once the villain has been satisfactorily dealt with, everyone else is just perfect. That is particularly so with anyone who works for the train company. These people are all angels in disguise (though the disguise is not very effective).The whole thing is rather sickeningly sentimental, but that may well be an American thing about Christmas (I remember reading an even more disagreeable Christmas book by John Grisham which had me rushing for the sick bag on every page). I shan’t spoil things for you by revealing the story. Suffice it to say that it is pretty plain how the love part is going to end up, though the mechanism for resolving that does come as a rather satisfactory – if incredible – surprise.Many have praised the comedy in the book. I do feel awful for saying this, but I found it, for the most part, to be an enormously unfunny book. True, one is perfectly well aware that one should be guffawing at intervals. But the comedy is horribly laboured. There is simply no subtlety, and really funny writing does require subtlety.I am afraid this was a real disappointment. But I shan’t be put off reading Baldacci’s thrillers. I just won’t be doing that on a train going across America (just in case I get trapped with a whole lot of awful do-gooders).Charles

I really liked the book although at the start wondered who was the actual writer. soon found out and really enjoyed the story and the marvellous twist at the end.

Well written whirl of a cross country trip. Thanks for bringing us thru all the twists and turns. A delight.

I had first watched the movie a while ago and, well, it was disappointing. Despite the fancy lineup of famous actors, the story was slow-moving and plain boring… This year, I thought I’d give the book a chance in the hope that much of the excitement had been lost in the script adaptation… But sadly, it turned out to be quite the same experience. Boredom galore and a tedious writing style. So, despite the beautiful cover, it failed to deliver on its promise of a feel-good, magical holiday tale.