08/05/2019
Clayton (Beautiful Exiles) reaches into the troubled lives of the Third Reich’s civilian victims, drawing readers into one woman’s efforts to save children in this excellent novel based on actual events. Geertruida Wijsmuller, known as “Tante Truus” and part of the Dutch resistance, is determined to risk everything to save children of all ages despite—or because of—her inability to bring a pregnancy to term herself. In Vienna, the lives of two children are highlighted: Stephan Neuman is Jewish, and because he turned 17 in 1938, he’s barely allowed to escape to England in the 1938–1939 Kindertransport, which will not accept 18-year-olds. Stephan’s friend and budding beloved, 15-year-old Sofie-Helene Perger, is not Jewish, but her mother is a journalist who refuses to stop writing articles critical of Hitler. Stephan, an aspiring playwright, must adapt to the changes in his life, which was once filled with wealth from his father’s famous chocolate factory. Math prodigy Sofie also tries to adapt, uncertain about how to help Stephan without threatening her own family. The children and Tante Truus’s stories don’t intersect until later in the book, when she secures them safe passage to England due to a daring, last-second decision. Clayton effectively captures the dim hope of survival amid the mounting terror of the lead-up to WWII. This is a standout historical fiction that serves as a chilling reminder of how insidious, pervasive evil can gradually seep into everyday lives. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates, Inc. (Sept.)
The Last Train to London is a rare thing: intellectually provocative and emotionally moving in equal measure. What a fine tribute to the victims and survivors of the Nazis’ early terrors, and to the woman who at great personal risk and sacrifice subverted Hitler’s will. Everyone should read this timely, gorgeous novel.
Sometimes a novel comes along that feels both rooted in history, yet timelessly pertinent. The Last Train to London is a brilliant and chilling reminder of history’s lessons, told urgently and sympathetically from the viewpoint of the children desperate to flee Hitler’s regime, and the women willing to risk all to save them. Meg Waite Clayton’s unflinching, evocative prose brings the entwined destinies of Stephan, Žofie-Helene, and Truus to life. The cruelties, large and small, inflicted by the Nazis on their chosen scapegoats echo ominously in today’s world, leading us to ponder the thin line separating bravery from indifference. Yet The Last Train to London is also a reminder of love, tenderness, and friendship that blossoms despite tremendous risk. Beautifully written and brimming with hope and gravitas, this is a tale that will transport readers to the edge of their seats, even as the last Kinder Transport prepares, against all odds, to leave for London.
What a delight it was to read this brilliant telling of the Kindertransport, a novel threaded with compassion, hope and love. Thank you, Meg Waite Clayton for reminding us of what can happen when good people conspire against evil.”
The Last Train to London is an absolutely fascinating, beautifully rendered story of love, loss, and heroism in the dark days leading up to World War II. Clayton perfectly captures the tension and heartbreak of the times, which feel so relevant today. It is a glowing portrait of women rising up against impossible odds to save children.
“The Last Train to London is painful and beautiful, absorbing and unforgettable. A wonderful tribute to courage, to a remarkable woman, to the ones she saved, and the ones she could not. Recommend this book to anyone who thinks no single person can make a difference.
2019-06-17
Clayton's (Beautiful Exiles, 2018, etc.) novel about the Kindertransport program joins the recent spate of Holocaust books (from All the Light We Cannot See to The Tattooist of Auschwitz) that allow readers to identity with heroes and survivors instead of victims.
The real-life heroine here is Truus Wijsmuller, the Dutch Christian woman instrumental in smuggling approximately 10,000 children out of the Reich and into England through the Kindertransport. The villain is the infamous Adolph Eichmann. Early in his career Eichmann authored the influential paper "The Jewish Problem," about how to rid the Reich of Jews. After Germany took over Austria he landed a powerful position in Vienna. In 1938, Truus met with Eichmann, who offered what he assumed was an impossible deal: If she could arrange papers for exactly 600 healthy children to travel in one week's time—on the Sabbath, when Jewish law forbids travel—he would allow safe passage. With help from British activists, Truus successfully made the arrangements and found refuge for all 600 children in England. Clayton intersects these historical figures and events with fictional characters trapped in Vienna. Aspiring playwright Stephan, 15 years old when the novel begins in 1936, comes from a wealthy Jewish family, manufacturers of highly prized chocolate candies. The Nazis strip ownership of the chocolate factory from Stephan's father and hand it to Stephan's Aryan Uncle Michael. A guilty collaborator torn between greed and love, Michael is the novel's most realistically portrayed character, neither good nor entirely evil. Sensitive, brilliant, and precocious, Stephan is naturally drawn to equally sensitive, brilliant, and precocious Žofie-Helene, a math genius whose anti-Nazi father died under questionable circumstances and whose journalist mother writes the outspokenly anti-Nazi articles about actual events, like Britain's limiting Jewish immigration and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, that punctuate the plot. After Kristallnacht Stephan ends up hiding in Vienna's sewers (a weird nod to Orson Welles in The Third Man), and Žofie-Helene's mother is arrested. Will Stephan and Žofie-Helene end up among the children Truus saves?
Workmanlike and less riveting than the subject matter.
