Full disclosure: I distrust most novels that feature real world famous people. The writers are too often excessively deferential toward their main character, resulting in more of a hagiography than a novel about a real live human being, warts and all.
But I’m happy to report that this is not that book. It’s 1928 and Agatha Christie is on the run from her failed first marriage and the crushing attention from the press that came with it. She is planning to escape to the Caribbean and then she sees an article about Leonard Woolley’s archeological discoveries in Syria. So she boards the fabled Orient Express train from Paris to Istanbul, with Damascus as her final destination.
I do love me a great setting, and Ashford might have been the set designer for the 1974 film of the Christie novel.
The excitement of boarding the train gave way to exquisite relief as she climbed up a tapestry-covered ladder and slipped between damask sheets…
The headwaiter seated Agatha with her back to the engine and asked whether she would prefer Indian or Chinese tea. He went to fetch it while she perused the menu: eggs Benedict, kedgeree, or pancakes with maple syrup?…The newspaper, carefully ironed, was laid out beside silver cutlery that glinted where the sun caught it…
I mean, lead me to it. But Agatha isn’t the only single woman traveling on the Orient Express.
As she lifted the monogrammed porcelain cup to her lips, she spotted a girl at the table opposite.
In fact there are two other women traveling alone on that journey, all bound for Damascus, each with deep-held secrets that will radically change their lives, some for the better, and some…not.
She thought abut how she had pleaded with Archie to stay when he told her about his affair. How she had begged him to give their marriage another chance, to stay for three more months before making a decision. She remembered how awful that had been, how cold he was toward her and the rows they had had. Things had become so bad that if she entered a room, he would get up and leave…Eventually, she saw that by trying to cling to him, all she had done was prolong the agony. There were no half measures with Archie. I can’t stand not having what I want, and I can’t stand not being happy. Everybody can’t be happy–somebody has got be unhappy. He’d said it time and again during those three months.
Which tells us everything we need to know about Archie, but all three women are suffering from one man-related malady or another. Suffice it to say that the male character you would least expect to show up does, and does so in whole-hearted and heart-warming style.
Ashford waxes even more lyrical about the desert landscape of the Middle East as she does about the Wagon-Lits service on board the train.
“Oh, look!” Katharine knelt up in bed, her nose against the glass. “It’s the Cilician Gates!…It’s the pass through the Taurus Mountains. Alexander the Great brought his army through here in 333 BC, and Saint Paul passed through his way to visit the Galatians. The train always stops to let people get out and admire the view.”…
“It’s like standing on the rim of the world!” Nancy took Agatha’s arm. The rock beneath their feet dropped almost vertically. They were looking out at a vast plain, hazy with mist in the early sunshine…As she gazed at the vast plain below, the colors changed before her eyes, from a milky violet blue to smoky gray to a pale yellow green.
and
There was something about being in the desert, at daybreak, with the colors of the dawn–pale pinks, corals, and blues–and the pure, cool air that gave everything a sense of wonder…This was what she had dreamed of. Here, in this barren landscape, she was truly away from everything–with the silent morning air, the rising sun, the sand for a seat, and the taste of sausages and tea.
Part tripartite romance, part travelogue, partly a short version of Bonehead Archeology, and a thoroughly enjoyable read, after which you will as I did google for images of the Cilician Gates and Bahr al Milh and Ukhaidir.
Book Review Monday Chatter Lindsay Jayne Ashford The Woman on the Orient Express
6 Comments Leave a comment ›
Let me start off by saying that I love your work and have followed you for years. Especially the Kate Shugak series. However, I was so surprised when I read this article and saw all the typos, dropped words, etc that I wondered if you actually wrote it! I probably will check out the book, though.
Kay Brewer
Skbrewer@sbcglobal.net
Found them both, Kay, and thanks for the alert.
Oooh sounds right up my ally! Thanks Dana, will add it to Mount TBR 😀
My work here is done. (grin)
This immediately reminded me of the poem, “You, Andrew Marvell,” by Archibald MacLeish. I think it’s the exotic place names and particularly the reference to a gate that triggered it. I first read the poem as a junior in high school and it has remained one of my favorites ever since. (To give you an idea of how long that’s been, my youngest grandchild just graduated from high school!)
And I just requested the book from my library.
You, Andrew Marvell
By Archibald MacLeish
And here face down beneath the sun
And here upon earth’s noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:
To feel creep up the curving east
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
Upon those under lands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow
And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change
And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass
And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on
And deepen on Palmyra’s street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown
And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls
And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land
Nor now the long light on the sea:
And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on …
“…time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near…”