Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim

Distressing, vivid, and beautifully crisp, Michele Zackheim’s Last Train to Paris (Europa Editions, 2013), is one of the most striking books I’ve read this year.

When a long-lost trunk of old notebooks is delivered to her door, octogenarian Rose Manon recalls her time as a leading newpaperwoman in Berlin and Paris during the prelude to World War Two.

It’s a novel about writing and journalism styles, about religious heritage, the echoing of family traits through generations, the masks we wear for certain audiences, and the creeping stranglehold of Nazism.

I cried at the dreadful fate of Annelie, and marvelled at Zackheim’s power of putting cinematic scenes in my mind. Rose herself is a flawed character, and the stronger for it.

There are some occasional false notes in the dialogue, but overall I thought this an intense and successful portrayal of the shifting sands of Hitler’s early years and the horror the Jewish, black, and immigrant communities faced when they realised it was too late to leave.