From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Night Train to Lisbon

Pascal Mercier,

Barbara Harshav (Translator)

Start date: March 15, 2020

Finish date: April 15, 2020

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

Why we're reading this: March 2020 selection for Migration Theme
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What Members Thought

Jul 12, 2023 Tony rated it did not like it

Shelves: translated-fiction, novels, adapted-for-film, setting-europe

I was gifted this book in advance of a vacation to Lisbon, and so gamely started reading it on the airplane over. After about seventy or eighty insipid pages, I set it aside for more compelling fare. Out of a sense of duty to the gift-giver, I picked it back up upon returning home and slogged my way through it over several weeks. Written twenty years ago, and apparently a bestseller, I can't say it's aged particularly well.

The plot revolves around a 50-something divorcee who teaches Latin at a S I was gifted this book in advance of a vacation to Lisbon, and so gamely started reading it on the airplane over. After about seventy or eighty insipid pages, I set it aside for more compelling fare. Out of a sense of duty to the gift-giver, I picked it back up upon returning home and slogged my way through it over several weeks. Written twenty years ago, and apparently a bestseller, I can't say it's aged particularly well.

The plot revolves around a 50-something divorcee who teaches Latin at a Swiss high school. A master of ancient languages, he surrounds himself with words and books rather than people, and lives an utterly banal life. One day, on the way to school, he stops a young woman from jumping off a bridge, and that seems to jar him into a midlife crisis. He encounters a thirty-year-old book in Portuguese (which he can't read), and is instantly obsessed with it -- walking out of his classroom and straight onto a train to Lisbon to try and find its author. The story then follows him as he tries to learn more about the author (a brilliant young doctor under Salazar's dictatorship), having incredibly fortuitous encounters along the way.

It's basically a philosophical novel -- concerned with ideas of the self, ethics, choices, fate, religion, etc. -- but all quite mannered and pretentious. I learned after reading it that the author is, in fact, a professor of philosophy who specialized in consciousness and cognition, and whose age is approximately that of the protagonist. The result is a bunch of introspective hand-wringing, interspersed with excerpts from the Portuguese book that are supposed to be lyrical, magical, and profound -- but I found mostly unreadable.

There are fleeting moments of interest -- the doctor was tangled in the anti-Salazar underground, and there's a skeleton of a thriller subplot woven into the story. But that's also kind of overwrought and cheezy in the end. It also doesn't help that every female character in the book is there to champion or help either the doctor or the protagonist. I never really cared about either the contemporary teacher or the doctor, both of whom were too self-serious and self-absorbed to engender any sympathy from me. The movie adaptation stars a rumpled Jeremy Irons and retains all the essential plot points save one, but is as limp on the screen as this is on the page. ...more

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Oct 20, 2020 Travellinckx rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, novel, philosophy

When I bought the book, I thought I would read Philip Roth's kind of story, (of whom I am not really a big fan). I bought it anyway because it's secondhand, cheap and most importantly, I love the title... Hahaha. I always have a soft spot for Portugal, specially Lisbon. Any mention of Fernando Pessoa, I would jump without hesitation. I opened it randomly, and voila, Pessoa's name pop up, so I was hooked. I thought it was a romantic drama.
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Little that I know, that this book would take so much tim When I bought the book, I thought I would read Philip Roth's kind of story, (of whom I am not really a big fan). I bought it anyway because it's secondhand, cheap and most importantly, I love the title... Hahaha. I always have a soft spot for Portugal, specially Lisbon. Any mention of Fernando Pessoa, I would jump without hesitation. I opened it randomly, and voila, Pessoa's name pop up, so I was hooked. I thought it was a romantic drama.
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Little that I know, that this book would take so much time and so much energy to finish. Basically, it is a book within a book. It is a story of middle-aged philologist, a professor of ancient language (yesss... sounds scary already) who suddenly had a middle aged crisis after an awkward encounter with a mysterious Portuguese woman and a book by an unknown author he found in an old bookshop.
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Night Train to Lisbon turned out to be a restless-soul-searching-trip with existential question when-where-how did my life turn wrong? Using the book by this unknown Portuguese writer as the guide, our linguist protagonist is not only tracing back the mysterious author's life, but it is also tracing back a family saga along with its context within a Portuguese 1974 revolution. On top of its layers of subplot, Night Train To Lisbon presents social contrast (an aristocrat vs a peasant, a judge vs a thief, a resistance vs authoritharian regime, etc) with philosophical insert that we (as the reader, or is it just me, maybe? ) keep on trying to relate it to the professor. In other words, despite its satisfying story and plot, I still couldn't process it completely, even after I finished reading it. There is something terrifying about the question that this book forced us to face.
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So, out of curiosity, I googled Pascal Mercier and geeeeeezz cheese and crackers... His real name is Peter Bieri, and he is a German, a professor of the history of philosophy, and co founder of research unit for Cognition and Brain studies at the German Research Foundation that focuses on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. No wonder, the book scares me.
Nevertheless, it's a good book, I wish I read it when I am older. ...more

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Apr 25, 2008 Sunflower rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-read-2008

Such an interesting premise to explore.....such a disappointment to read. This book oversells itself. Like many of the other reviewers, I felt I had to finish this so that it didn't defeat me, I was irritated by the poor proof reading and the italicised writings of the second main character, more so because I was in a poorly lit hotel room at the time. (They may be saving the planet with those itsy little long life bulbs, but for those of us who read in hotel rooms, our visual acuity is desperat ...more

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Oct 12, 2008 Karen rated it liked it

I am really enjoying this book. I think what I like about the book is the pace. I don't necessarily agree with the philosophical views espoused in this book, but I am enjoying it, nonetheless. I do think that the book should have been edited more, or so-so translation. There are typos, misspellings and awkward sentences.

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