What do you think?
Rate this book
Where the Trains Turn
I don't like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she's willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert's fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. "The train tried to kill us," he tells her.
Rupert's terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?
Published here for the first time in English, "Where the Trains Turn" won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti's annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she's willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert's fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. "The train tried to kill us," he tells her.
Rupert's terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?
Published here for the first time in English, "Where the Trains Turn" won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti's annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.
84 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
About the author
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
20 books212 followersPasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen is Finland’s best kept literary secret…
In the early 70’s, when he was five, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen lived in a block of flats by the Jyväskylä’s (a city in Central Finland) old cemetery and believed in vampires.
In the early 80’s he still had vampire dreams and fell in love with Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim.
Ten years later Pasi wrote his first short stories. He wan the writing competition of SciFi and fantasy stories four times and then decided to become a writer.
Now he is an author, but he is also a Finnish and literature teacher in upper secondary school and the father of three sons.
He hasn’t stopped loving vampires, Jeanne Moreau and old film classics.
In the early 70’s, when he was five, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen lived in a block of flats by the Jyväskylä’s (a city in Central Finland) old cemetery and believed in vampires.
In the early 80’s he still had vampire dreams and fell in love with Jeanne Moreau in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim.
Ten years later Pasi wrote his first short stories. He wan the writing competition of SciFi and fantasy stories four times and then decided to become a writer.
Now he is an author, but he is also a Finnish and literature teacher in upper secondary school and the father of three sons.
He hasn’t stopped loving vampires, Jeanne Moreau and old film classics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
April 30, 2020
“Oh what a nice picture! Is it a cow? And that must be a milking machine.”
“No.” (The child is very indignant about his mother’s poor insight.) “It’s a horse-moose who travels in a time machine to the Jurassic period where the dinosaurs will eat him up.”
(Mother takes an aspirin and a glass of water.)
man, some tor shorts are long!! my fault for not doing the scrolly-downy thing to see what i was getting into, and also my fault for not realizing that i had read this author before (The Rabbit Back Literature Society) and only been half-into it. a lot of reviews on here are complaining about the poor quality of the finnish-to-english translation of this story, where phrases like my gay collie Robbie occur, but are not as fun as one would hope. and it's true that there's a stiffness to the prose occasionally that makes it kind of … distant. however, the narrator herself, known only as "e.n.," contributes to this feeling - she's a woman completely set against imagination or flights of fancy, who abhors fiction, and reads encyclopedias to relax.
It’s hard enough to cope day by day with what presumes to be my own everyday reality; to stir and feed imagination with fiction would just make me lose my sense of reality altogether. It’s pretty fickle already, my understanding of which part of the things I remember has actually happened and what is composed of mere empty memories which never had a reference in the historical continuum that’s called objective reality.
yeah, she's like that.
and yet she finds herself in a tor short; one that is infused with all kinds of fantastical happenings and flexible reality.
this story is her written chronicle of the events that happened to her and her son, to try to make sense of what she witnessed and cannot quite accept despite her claims that my memories in their subjectivity and contradictoriness are much too confused for me to bother recording them. e.n. is a cold fish of a woman who does not allow herself to be ruled by grand emotions, and yet was quite reasonably happy (or at least fairly unruffled most of the time). like all of our parents, she had sexual intercourse exactly once, which resulted in the birth of her son rupert.
raising a child proves to be very taxing to her and her need for order and reality. rupert is a particularly imaginative, creative child, whose behavior causes her equal parts love and distress.
More than a couple of times I was seized with a feeling that I had been caught in the middle of The Great Irrationality Circus where Rupert was a pompous mad director. Even looking at him made my head ache.
she is raising rupert alone, having no need for his father gunnar after he served his purpose in half-creating rupert, but she allows him access to their son one day a month, during which they usually go to the railway to watch the trains. in typical colorless prose, she relates
Now and then I found it difficult to believe that only eight years back we’d had intimate intercourse with each other. But Rupert of course was a rather concrete evidence of it, thus believe I must—we both must.
so romantic!! and if that's not a good enough valentine card for you, she also refers to gunnar as the only man in this life I’d ever allowed to push his male protrusion inside me.
hot.
so but one day, rupert returns from one of his train field trips with gunnar all in a tizzy, insisting that the train tried to kill them, and worried that it has followed him home. gunnar has no idea what rupert is talking about, just that he'd suddenly flipped out, screaming and scratching, when they were in the middle of their day. rupert's mother shoos gunnar away, and tries to talk sense into her son, who keeps claiming that they saw one of the special trains, the ones that leave the timetable and run off rails. his mother is not having that, and tries to talk some sense into him, but several days later, they learn that gunnar had been killed by a train on his way back from their home.
so that's alarming.
rupert continues to fear the trains and retreats into himself and his imagination, preferring his own company over that of other little boys.
and somehow this woman who only believes in facts and reality comes up with this spectacularly colorful image:
I would have let both my breasts be ground to mink food if only Rupert, too, could have been one of those healthy, noisy, happy children one saw in our neighbourhood.
ew.
she decides to rid him of all imaginative stimulation - she burns all his comic books, storybooks, coloring books. she buries all his crayons, paper, and all of his drawings. she forces him into the chess club, the model airplane club, and other places where imagination is suppressed. basically, she's the worst.
and he accepts it, although he still knows that the train is out there, waiting to get him.
that's all i feel like relating here, but just know that this story goes on and on, and takes some surprising turns, initially grounded in reality but then slowly allowing room for the fantastic to encroach, against all e.n.'s inclinations.
the writing is kind of a drag, but the ending is interesting and the payoff is worth all the slogging to get there. mostly.
it's not my favorite tor short by a long shot, but you might like it more than me.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2014/11/19/where-t...
come to my blog!
February 5, 2017
j is for Jääskeläinen
I am notorious for leaving read books and stories un-reviewed, sometimes (at least recently....ugh) for months. And a lot of it is time, but a lot of it is because I like to step back after reading something and let it stew a bit, see if any of the meat sticks with me afterward or whether I'm consuming a bunch of empty calories. Tastes good going down, but give it a few days, and I barely remember eating.
As the Trains Turn was like protein packed power salad. No empty calories, and something that sticks with you, but not necessarily the tastiest of treats.
So I decided to keep my rating at 3.5, but I'm rounding up and not down.
If you stand on the rails when the train comes, you’ll be smashed up like a fly under a hammer. You have no chance at all to survive. But at the very same moment you step aside from its path, the train becomes harmless and Death loses his grip on you. You can stand half a meter or even just a few centimetres from the moving train, and the Grim Reaper can’t do anything but grin at you. Then you can laugh at his pale disappointed face!
As the Trains Turn was originally written in Finnish, and unfortunately, I think has fallen victim to "lost in translation" issues, which sucks since I can't say that I will ever be able to read Finnish. The story itself is really long for a short, and it was its length that caused me to drop stars. Ordinarily, length in shorts is my biggest critique, not necessarily too much length, but lack thereof. Shorts have only a limited number of pages, sentences, and words required to get a point and a story across, and many times I find that authors cram too much information into too little a space, or there isn't adequate space to tell a story which requires more.
This story is the exception in which there was too little story floating around in way too much space. But the story that is there is beautiful and juicy and poignant and has much to say. I just wished I didn't have to spend so much time searching for it.
And this is where the whole translation thing comes in. The story is surrounded by awkward phrasing, incorrect use of idioms, way too much description, too much filler, and choppy sentence structure that I firmly believe is not the fault of the author's, but of the translator. And unfortunately, since I cannot read Finnish, I feel like I cannot adequately rate this story unless I rate it based on the English translation.
Emma is our narrator and a very interesting one she is. She is a cold fish of a woman and a mother, but I did, oddly enough, find her sympathetic. She sends her son Rupert off with his father one day a month when the two of them spend hours walking the train tracks, and Rupert's father, Gunnar, indulges Rupert's love and fascination with the machines. Until one day, the outing is cut short and Gunnar brings Rupert back to his mother, in hysterics and imminently fearful, claiming he saw the trains running off the tracks and their timetables, and that this particular train was trying to kill them.
Emma, who is firmly grounded in facts, figures, and a little planet called reality, chalks everything up to Rupert's overactive imagination, which she secretly despises. When Rupert is unable to snap out of this crazy reality he has created, Emma destroys all his toys, comic books, drawings, crayons, and everything that does not ground him to the same rational reality in which she lives.
And so Rupert grows up, and that brilliant, imaginative, creative child disappears, and a cold, distant, logical, and rational adult emerges years later. But that train, the train that haunted him from so long ago, has never really disappeared. It haunts Rupert, and in turn begins to haunt Emma.
On the surface, this story could sound hokey and contrived. Killer trains attacking humans, ignoring and abandoning their human engineers, to completely think for themselves. A cheesey early Stephen King B-movie, if you will.
But this story is not like that. It is more deftly crafted, with a beautiful but flawed depiction of a mother and son's relationship at it's core. The trains represent anything that is larger than us, anything which takes us back to past traumas, and heartaches, missed opportunities, and memories we've all tried to erase. As Emma soon realizes, the demons of our pasts catch up with us, no matter how hard we try to forget. And some memories, even the most painful ones, are the ones which most firmly ground us, and they are the ones we cannot let escape.
The last third of this story is remarkably beautiful, and it was here that I couldn't put the story down. It has an ending that is perfect, in my opinion, and something that I couldn't have imagined for this story when I first started. It almost made the slog of the first two thirds worth it, just for the payoff. It could have been a perfect 5 stars if only the beginning were better executed and less descriptive. I actually came to respect Emma as a character even if I didn't like her or the decisions she made all the time. I felt her pain, her sorrow, her regrets, and her fears vividly, and above all, there was a candor in her voice which I appreciated above all else. She made the story authentic, which is something which I would argue seems to be lacking in a lot of contemporary fiction nowadays. This is a story which, I believe, deserves to be read, and deserves to be read for what it is. I chose it because of the stunning artwork on the cover, and actually the artwork in this one really fits the story and the tone in which it is written.
I'm glad I read this one. And I may actually choose to revisit it, because like I said, this story stuck with me. In an odd way, but in a very special way that only words with power can pull off.
Read it for FREE here:
http://www.tor.com/2014/11/19/where-t...
January 4, 2016
Opening: I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.
Read here
CR The Rabbit Back Literature Society
3* Where the Trains Turn
May 24, 2016
"Where the Trains Turn" won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti's annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.
Coming from an author who had vampire dreams in his adolescence, the book has characters continuously walking the length of a fence of limbo tumbling towards fantasy on one side and a reality they can’t fathom on the other.
A mother tries to understand her child’s fascination for trains and his wild speculation of one specific train that leaves it tracks and had attempted to trample him and his father in one of their trips. The promise the story starts off with is exemplary leaving it open to a lot of possibilities that can be brought in. It made me wonder whether the author might be able to accommodate a supernatural story flow or a science fiction or a powerful blend of the two within the short length of the book.
Alas, but it ends with a very frail ending which is unpredictable to the author’s credit but is a possibility that I as a reader won’t be willing to bet on which makes the whole story line moot. He plays tricks with the mind and tricks the readers but not in an appreciable way.
I’m a very rational person, who keeps her feet closely and safely in the dust of the earth in all situations. Unlike some others, who used to let their imagination fly irresponsibly like a kite on a stormy Sunday afternoon; such was my lost son Rupert. The place where the trains turn could only have been invented by Rupert himself, .….
In case you never plan to read it and would want to know the end add a few more words to this and you have the whole disappointing twist.
I did want to dissect on a few things from the short story but I didn’t find any symbolism or a hidden clue or a trail surreptitiously followed through in the story that would eventually lead to an unexpected twist.
I wonder what the author would make out of it if he had decided to lengthen the scope of the story and had written a full-fledged novel out of the momentum he had gathered at the start. I’m glad though that it ended abruptly failing to leave a ripple of after-thought in the reader’s mind which might be unsatisfactory as the book was a short one and didn’t take much effort and time.
This might just be one of the books that I would not be able to do justice to through a review but I wouldn’t take the effort to give it another short to make it right and I’m happy about it.
Give it a read if you feel like it. Won’t take much of your time -
http://www.tor.com/2014/11/19/where-t...
Coming from an author who had vampire dreams in his adolescence, the book has characters continuously walking the length of a fence of limbo tumbling towards fantasy on one side and a reality they can’t fathom on the other.
A mother tries to understand her child’s fascination for trains and his wild speculation of one specific train that leaves it tracks and had attempted to trample him and his father in one of their trips. The promise the story starts off with is exemplary leaving it open to a lot of possibilities that can be brought in. It made me wonder whether the author might be able to accommodate a supernatural story flow or a science fiction or a powerful blend of the two within the short length of the book.
Alas, but it ends with a very frail ending which is unpredictable to the author’s credit but is a possibility that I as a reader won’t be willing to bet on which makes the whole story line moot. He plays tricks with the mind and tricks the readers but not in an appreciable way.
I’m a very rational person, who keeps her feet closely and safely in the dust of the earth in all situations. Unlike some others, who used to let their imagination fly irresponsibly like a kite on a stormy Sunday afternoon; such was my lost son Rupert. The place where the trains turn could only have been invented by Rupert himself, .….
In case you never plan to read it and would want to know the end add a few more words to this and you have the whole disappointing twist.
I did want to dissect on a few things from the short story but I didn’t find any symbolism or a hidden clue or a trail surreptitiously followed through in the story that would eventually lead to an unexpected twist.
I wonder what the author would make out of it if he had decided to lengthen the scope of the story and had written a full-fledged novel out of the momentum he had gathered at the start. I’m glad though that it ended abruptly failing to leave a ripple of after-thought in the reader’s mind which might be unsatisfactory as the book was a short one and didn’t take much effort and time.
This might just be one of the books that I would not be able to do justice to through a review but I wouldn’t take the effort to give it another short to make it right and I’m happy about it.
Give it a read if you feel like it. Won’t take much of your time -
http://www.tor.com/2014/11/19/where-t...
January 18, 2016
How does that song go?
What do you do with a drunken sailor
What do you do with a drunken sailor
What do you do with a drunken sailor
Ear-ly in the morning.
It relates to this Tor.com novella, because I was a tizzy and needed someone to throw some water in my face after I reached the ending. Reeling. Not from a boat ride but from Trains that go off the track. Instead of whales, thar be Trains with dragon souls here.
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Ear-ly in the morning.
A woman with a son who learns the secret of Trains (capital T). Or is he? Or is she? Reeling. When the gods left Greece, I thought they went to Iceland, but apparently not. They took a turn into Finland and darkness.
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
The surprise ending was fine with me, and the ending that I thought was going to occur would have been fine with me also. Nor did I seem bothered by the translation. I do know that Finns control the winds, so why not Trains?
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
Ear-ly in the morning.
Each morning, I leave in darkness to walk to the transit station to begin my commute. Each morning, the Train toots me in greeting, as we arrive at the station at the same time. It's like it's looking out for me. I've always felt that about Trains. If the Train is not feeling well, I take the bus. If the Train is feeling jolly, I hop aboard.
So, this story was perfect for me. Still reeling, though.
Book Season = Winter (hidden brambles)
What do you do with a drunken sailor
What do you do with a drunken sailor
What do you do with a drunken sailor
Ear-ly in the morning.
It relates to this Tor.com novella, because I was a tizzy and needed someone to throw some water in my face after I reached the ending. Reeling. Not from a boat ride but from Trains that go off the track. Instead of whales, thar be Trains with dragon souls here.
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Stick him in a barrel with a hosepipe on him
Ear-ly in the morning.
A woman with a son who learns the secret of Trains (capital T). Or is he? Or is she? Reeling. When the gods left Greece, I thought they went to Iceland, but apparently not. They took a turn into Finland and darkness.
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
The surprise ending was fine with me, and the ending that I thought was going to occur would have been fine with me also. Nor did I seem bothered by the translation. I do know that Finns control the winds, so why not Trains?
That's what we do with a drunken sailor
Ear-ly in the morning.
Each morning, I leave in darkness to walk to the transit station to begin my commute. Each morning, the Train toots me in greeting, as we arrive at the station at the same time. It's like it's looking out for me. I've always felt that about Trains. If the Train is not feeling well, I take the bus. If the Train is feeling jolly, I hop aboard.
So, this story was perfect for me. Still reeling, though.
Book Season = Winter (hidden brambles)
July 27, 2015
(Incidentally, I read this entirely on trains.) This short story, verging on novella length, is an odd mixture that doesn't fully work, and I have to agree with other reviewers that the translation doesn't seem to be very good, with awkward phrases and idioms that have either been translated incorrectly or just don't make sense in English. There's an awkwardness in the themes, too: the idea of sentient trains running 'off the tracks' is, at points, so silly that it's difficult to believe this is supposed to be a story for adults - but Rupert's brain damage wouldn't exactly fit very well into a story for kids. Despite all of this, however, I found something about the story gripping, effective and atmospheric enough that I enjoyed it. Karen's review brought this to my attention, and I agree with her that while parts of it might feel like a bit of a drag, it's worth reading.
June 9, 2023
Completely haunting and wonderful and I hated the mother until the very end when I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. This is an award-winning story in Finland - it deserves more exposure. It's the story of Emma Nightingale, an unmarried, repressive mother of a precocious, introverted child. Eight-year-old Rupert's favorite things in the whole wide world is Wednesdays, when the mail delivers his Donald Duck cartoons, and the monthly visits of his father, Gunnar, who takes him storytelling and ambling along the local railroad tracks.
One day, though, Rupert and his dad return distraught and spooked - the trains, say Rupert, are trying to kill them. At that spot where the trains turn, and they run off track and off timetables. And, apparently, off leash.
Slowly, inexorably, Emma's orderly, rational life unravels, as she begins to abuse her child mentally and emotionally in order to 'help' him. This was the hardest part for me to read, where I wanted to throat punch her in her factual Adam's apple. And slowly, inexorably, as Rupert is steered by his repressive mom into her version of the perfect son, the inevitable happens and tragedy strikes.
I was completely saddened and heartbroken at the end, and not necessarily by Emma's loss, even if it was her voice that narrated the entire story. Rather, the voice of her child, Rupert. The imaginative child who slowly grew into the young lawyer with a promising life - his is the one that tugged at my heartstrings. And so, for the perpetually child-like Rupert, this one's for you:
January 8, 2015
I liked this extended short story, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as The Rabbit Back Literature Society. The story is interesting, but the translation from Finnish to English is so poor that many of the sentences read like they were written backwards and it all comes off very awkwardly. Also, it's not as unique as Rabbit Back Lit and felt very much like a Ray Bradbury tale. Still, it's very much worth a read, and I'll continue to jump on anything else by this writer that gets translated into English.
Also, note that while GoodReads lists this as being 32 pages long, it actually comes in at 84 pages.
Also, note that while GoodReads lists this as being 32 pages long, it actually comes in at 84 pages.
November 15, 2017
رواية تعيد التألق للخيال العلمي، خلال القراءة حتى منتصف الرواية تقريباً ربما نظن بأننا نشاهد مجرد نسخة مبسطة من فيلم خيال علمي غريب، ولكن الأحداث وطريقة تقديم مشاعر الشخصيات تأخذنا في النصف الثاني حتى النهاية إلى أجواء مشحونة بالترقب والتأمل وكأننا أصبحنا داخل أجزاء الرواية، النهاية مميزة وتحتمل الكثير من النظر ولن تفارقنا حتى وقت طويل.
July 15, 2015
A rational middle-aged Finnish woman thinks about her late son and his obsession with trains. This has a wonderfully unique character voice. Here's an example (the narrator's son was out all night, while the narrator sat up worrying after him):
"I wasn’t able to utter anything for a while, so as not to start crying or screaming uncontrollably; I wasn’t able to even move, because I felt a compelling desire to seize the child and thoroughly shake him for scaring me like that.
Finally I said surprisingly calmly: “I’ll make you a cup of cocoa. You’ll drink it without a murmur and then go back to sleep. The camera stays here. We won’t talk any more about this, but if you do something like this once more, I won’t even ask you anything, I’ll make a stew of you while you sleep and sell you to that drunkard Traphollow for mink food. And with the money I get I’ll bribe Mr. Starling to close his eyes about your disappearance. And if anybody asks about you, I won’t admit you ever existed. Do we understand each other?”
Rupert stared at the camera with nostrils wide open. He pointed at it and whispered: “But there’s evidence in there!”
“Do we understand each other?” I insisted. My voice could have peeled an apple.
He struggled long with himself before he gave up and nodded."
But also, the magic in here is exceedingly slippery in a way I really appreciate.
"I wasn’t able to utter anything for a while, so as not to start crying or screaming uncontrollably; I wasn’t able to even move, because I felt a compelling desire to seize the child and thoroughly shake him for scaring me like that.
Finally I said surprisingly calmly: “I’ll make you a cup of cocoa. You’ll drink it without a murmur and then go back to sleep. The camera stays here. We won’t talk any more about this, but if you do something like this once more, I won’t even ask you anything, I’ll make a stew of you while you sleep and sell you to that drunkard Traphollow for mink food. And with the money I get I’ll bribe Mr. Starling to close his eyes about your disappearance. And if anybody asks about you, I won’t admit you ever existed. Do we understand each other?”
Rupert stared at the camera with nostrils wide open. He pointed at it and whispered: “But there’s evidence in there!”
“Do we understand each other?” I insisted. My voice could have peeled an apple.
He struggled long with himself before he gave up and nodded."
But also, the magic in here is exceedingly slippery in a way I really appreciate.
January 5, 2016
You may read online Thor.com.
I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.
Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?
I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.
Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?
February 10, 2015
“Happy endings in real life are usually just stages on the way to a more final and less cheerful end.”
An award-winning fantasy short story which takes as many twists and turns as a plate of Finnish spaghetti.
Marred, unfortunately, by an awkward translation into English. The occasional brilliant word pictures—“thunder-colored BMW”—scattered among many less apt, in fact confusing verbiage.
Many thanks to Tor Books for bringing these jewels to print here.
A fresh venture into a world where much is not what it seems.
Story was four star; clunky translations killed a star.
An award-winning fantasy short story which takes as many twists and turns as a plate of Finnish spaghetti.
Marred, unfortunately, by an awkward translation into English. The occasional brilliant word pictures—“thunder-colored BMW”—scattered among many less apt, in fact confusing verbiage.
Many thanks to Tor Books for bringing these jewels to print here.
A fresh venture into a world where much is not what it seems.
Story was four star; clunky translations killed a star.
December 17, 2016
I enjoyed this story mostly for the protagonist. Relentlessly rational and emotionally cold, she is profoundly unlikable as a person--and yet compelling and understandable. She insists on being accepted on her own terms. It's a rare set of traits to find in a woman in fiction.
Pacing-wise, though, the story was very bottom-heavy; I thought the beginning could have been trimmed a great deal (or at least leavened with more foreshadowing). I enjoyed the voice but didn't really find myself engaged in the plot until its final quarter.
The trains were pretty cool, though.
Pacing-wise, though, the story was very bottom-heavy; I thought the beginning could have been trimmed a great deal (or at least leavened with more foreshadowing). I enjoyed the voice but didn't really find myself engaged in the plot until its final quarter.
The trains were pretty cool, though.
June 29, 2014
Yllätyin, kuinka paljon pidin P. I. Jääskeläisen scifinovelleista, kun en scifistä ja fantasiasta muuten perusta. Kenties novellien arkisuus ja "tavalliset" henkilöt huijasivat lukijan uskomaan, että tässä on nyt ihan tavallisia tarinoita, joissa otetaan vain muutama askel tavallisuuden tuolle puolen. Yhden novellin nimi Pinnan alla toiseus piilee kuvaa kokoelmaa oivallisesti: kun elämän pintaa vähän raaputtaa, sen alta paljastuu ihmeellisiä kerroksia. Tutut asiat delfiineistä uniin ja junista sotakokemusten aiheuttamiin mielenterveysongelmiin saivat aivan uusia ulottuvuuksia. Näissä novelleissa ei siis niinkään rakenneta uusia maailmoja vaan sisällytetään niitä jo olemassa oleviin.
Scifinovelleissa taisivat eniten kutkuttaa ne hetket, kun joutui pohtimaan, mikä pitää paikkansa kunkin novellin kuvaamassa maailmanjärjestyksessä ja mikä on kuvitelmaa. Monessa novellissa liikuttiin osittain unimaailmoissa tai keinotodellisuudessa, mikä saattoi olla yllätys myös henkilöille. Novellit oli rannettu taidokkaasti siten, että juonikuvioita tai motiiveja ei väännetty rautalangasta, mutta lukijaa autettiin silti sopivasti pysymään kärryillä. Olen kiitollinen myös siitä, etteivät novellit pursunneet ylimääräisiä yksityiskohtia, joita luetellaan vain kuriositeetteina. Ainoastaan novellia On Murmaa kaatunut! oli hankala lukea, koska siinä oli minun makuuni liikaa outoja sanoja ja nimiä.
Suosikkini novelleista oli Valitut Palat -henkinen Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajattaren kanssa. Jääskeläinen onnistuu siinä paitsi parodioimaan amerikkalaisen julkaisijan kuukaudenkirja- ja lehtitekstilajia myös rakentamaan uskomattoman uskottavan kertomuksen ajankulun ihmeellisyyksistä. Aiheena oleva tavanomainen rakkaustarina kohoaa uusiin sfääreihin, kun sen huomaa olevan erilainen jokaisena viikonpäivänä. Ei ihme, että näille novelleille on sadellut palkintoja.
Scifinovelleissa taisivat eniten kutkuttaa ne hetket, kun joutui pohtimaan, mikä pitää paikkansa kunkin novellin kuvaamassa maailmanjärjestyksessä ja mikä on kuvitelmaa. Monessa novellissa liikuttiin osittain unimaailmoissa tai keinotodellisuudessa, mikä saattoi olla yllätys myös henkilöille. Novellit oli rannettu taidokkaasti siten, että juonikuvioita tai motiiveja ei väännetty rautalangasta, mutta lukijaa autettiin silti sopivasti pysymään kärryillä. Olen kiitollinen myös siitä, etteivät novellit pursunneet ylimääräisiä yksityiskohtia, joita luetellaan vain kuriositeetteina. Ainoastaan novellia On Murmaa kaatunut! oli hankala lukea, koska siinä oli minun makuuni liikaa outoja sanoja ja nimiä.
Suosikkini novelleista oli Valitut Palat -henkinen Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajattaren kanssa. Jääskeläinen onnistuu siinä paitsi parodioimaan amerikkalaisen julkaisijan kuukaudenkirja- ja lehtitekstilajia myös rakentamaan uskomattoman uskottavan kertomuksen ajankulun ihmeellisyyksistä. Aiheena oleva tavanomainen rakkaustarina kohoaa uusiin sfääreihin, kun sen huomaa olevan erilainen jokaisena viikonpäivänä. Ei ihme, että näille novelleille on sadellut palkintoja.
July 17, 2015
http://www.amazon.com/Where-Trains-Tu...
Emma Nightingale is a relentlessly practical, logical single mother raising a highly imaginative son. Emma does not read fiction or poetry or go to the movies; Rupert loves his Donald Duck comics, draws fantasy creatures, and tells wildly imaginative stories. Emma feels this is dangerous, but there's a limit to what she can do about it.
She also doesn't understand his enthusiasm for trains, but it's something he shares with his father, so she tolerates that for the sake of the father/son relationship.
But one day Rupert and his father Gunnar come home from their expedition very upset. Rupert says that a train tried to kill them, and says confusing things about trains that don't keep the timetables and can leave the tracks.
Later that day, on his way home, Gunnar is killed when a train track guard arm is up when it should be down, and Gunnar's car is on the tracks when the train comes.
Emma spends the next few years trying to eliminate all of the dangerous, upsetting imagination and fantasy from her son's life, for his own safety. For a long time, it seems she has succeeded. Then trains come back into their lives, in a shocking way, and Emma and Rupert are on their way to an even more startling resolution of a conflict with an enemy Emma can barely imagine.
The writing here is extremely effective, and Jääskeläinen draws us in to a character who initially seems very unsympathetic to anyone who would be reading fiction, never mind fantasy. Emma proves to be more complex and interesting than initially apparent, and what Jääskeläinen is doing with time and reality is thoroughly fascinating and satisfying.
Highly recommended.
Emma Nightingale is a relentlessly practical, logical single mother raising a highly imaginative son. Emma does not read fiction or poetry or go to the movies; Rupert loves his Donald Duck comics, draws fantasy creatures, and tells wildly imaginative stories. Emma feels this is dangerous, but there's a limit to what she can do about it.
She also doesn't understand his enthusiasm for trains, but it's something he shares with his father, so she tolerates that for the sake of the father/son relationship.
But one day Rupert and his father Gunnar come home from their expedition very upset. Rupert says that a train tried to kill them, and says confusing things about trains that don't keep the timetables and can leave the tracks.
Later that day, on his way home, Gunnar is killed when a train track guard arm is up when it should be down, and Gunnar's car is on the tracks when the train comes.
Emma spends the next few years trying to eliminate all of the dangerous, upsetting imagination and fantasy from her son's life, for his own safety. For a long time, it seems she has succeeded. Then trains come back into their lives, in a shocking way, and Emma and Rupert are on their way to an even more startling resolution of a conflict with an enemy Emma can barely imagine.
The writing here is extremely effective, and Jääskeläinen draws us in to a character who initially seems very unsympathetic to anyone who would be reading fiction, never mind fantasy. Emma proves to be more complex and interesting than initially apparent, and what Jääskeläinen is doing with time and reality is thoroughly fascinating and satisfying.
Highly recommended.
September 5, 2024
Li aqui, marquei lido aqui: Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2014 edition.
Nessa minha jornada de leitura dos contos da Tor, eu aprendi a pular o paragrafinho de sinopse do conto porque às vezes esse paragrafinho tem alguma descrição a mais do que eu gostaria de ler antes de ler o conto em si. Nesse conto, eu precisei ler a sinopse pra poder recomendá-lo pra um amigo porque o final do conto é uma coisa tão diferente do começo que eu já tinha esquecido como ele começou. É aquilo: no começo não tava entendendo e no final, parecia que tava no começo. Mas a história da protagonista é tão envolvente, como seu filho gosta de trens e quer saber tudo sobre eles -- ele é um ferroequinólogo (essa palavra existe mesmo) e anota suas observações num diário como se anotasse comportamento animal -- e como o relacionamento de todos (dela, do filho e do pai do filho) com trens é um relacionamento de vidas inteiras. Aliás, vidas inteiras é o ponto-chave desse conto. Como os trens definem as vidas de todos, estão presentes em momentos cruciais de todos, e o que a falta ou presença de trens faz com eles. Ou só a protagonista que tem sua vida definida por trens e seu relacionamento com eles... definindo assim todas as outras vidas.
Nessa minha jornada de leitura dos contos da Tor, eu aprendi a pular o paragrafinho de sinopse do conto porque às vezes esse paragrafinho tem alguma descrição a mais do que eu gostaria de ler antes de ler o conto em si. Nesse conto, eu precisei ler a sinopse pra poder recomendá-lo pra um amigo porque o final do conto é uma coisa tão diferente do começo que eu já tinha esquecido como ele começou. É aquilo: no começo não tava entendendo e no final, parecia que tava no começo. Mas a história da protagonista é tão envolvente, como seu filho gosta de trens e quer saber tudo sobre eles -- ele é um ferroequinólogo (essa palavra existe mesmo) e anota suas observações num diário como se anotasse comportamento animal -- e como o relacionamento de todos (dela, do filho e do pai do filho) com trens é um relacionamento de vidas inteiras. Aliás, vidas inteiras é o ponto-chave desse conto. Como os trens definem as vidas de todos, estão presentes em momentos cruciais de todos, e o que a falta ou presença de trens faz com eles. Ou só a protagonista que tem sua vida definida por trens e seu relacionamento com eles... definindo assim todas as outras vidas.
March 26, 2015
Where the Trains Turn by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen is a SFF novella about sentient ghost trains, an imaginative boy, a mother who prefers her life as well as her son's be grounded in reality, and a meeting with destiny. The story grabbed my attention once I got passed the clumsy translation from Finnish to English. The narrative is austere and even with the problematic translation the story retains a heavy atmosphere. The boy, whose obsession with trains is fed by his father's, is socially inadequate with a healthy imagination. After a tragic incident, the mother eliminates everything from his life that may spark the imagination and the boy's life takes a new course. A chance meeting with destiny changes that. What made this story a great read for me were the fantastic twists that came at the end. I never saw them coming.
November 2, 2014
Kirja tuntui epätasaiselta, sillä siinä on muutama sellainen novelli, jotka nousivat kaikkien aikojen suosikeiksini, mutta myös sellaisia, jotka jäivät kesken, koska teksti ei jaksanut kiinnostaa. Suosittelen lukemaan tästä kirjasta nimikkonovellin Missä junat kääntyvät ja kokoelman päättävän novellin Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajatteren kanssa. Myös Taivaalta pudonnut eläintarha, Perheterapiaa ja Olisimmepa mekin täällä ovat vilkaisemisen arvoisia.
January 8, 2015
I want a entire novel based on the "twist" concerning the main character's life. I want an entire genre of novels based on it.
August 13, 2024
My dearest Pasi, you managed again... To create an irresistible story. This one is shorter and yes, it took me some time till I realized it is the time.
Tho I had issues with Anna. Big ones. Till the end I was on Rupert's side...
And the twist? Splendid as usual 😉🙃 so 4 🚆 kitties, numbered 3-1-5-9.
First sentence: I don't like to think about the past.
Last sentence: For the sake of my son I go on with this, for his sake I write these thoughts of mine on paper.
Goodreads Challenge 2024: 74.book
Tho I had issues with Anna. Big ones. Till the end I was on Rupert's side...
And the twist? Splendid as usual 😉🙃 so 4 🚆 kitties, numbered 3-1-5-9.
First sentence: I don't like to think about the past.
Last sentence: For the sake of my son I go on with this, for his sake I write these thoughts of mine on paper.
Goodreads Challenge 2024: 74.book
June 24, 2017
By far the best thing I read in 2016, out of a multitude of great books. I'm sure part of that stems from a lifelong fascination with trains, but the steady creepy buildup of this story to a sudden intense malevolence was masterfully handled, along with the time paradoxes. Read this at night, and you'll never look at trains in quite the same way again.
June 5, 2021
Jääskeläisen esikoisteos, novellikokoelma oli hirveän raskas ja hidas luettava. En oikeastaan saanut otetta yhdestäkään tarinasta ja harmittelin sitä joka kerta kun tartuin kirjaan. Luin vähän hampaat irvessä kirjan loppuun ihan siksi että tykkäsin aiemmin kovasti lukemastani Jääskeläisen "Väärän kissan päivä"-kirjasta ja ajattelin että kyllä tämäkin hyväksi muuttuu. No eipä muuttunut. Se on harmillista koska kirjan teemat olivat mielenkiintoisia ja oivaltavia, jokin niissä vaan ei toiminut minulle ja jätti jotenkin keskeneräisen tympeän vaikutelman kokonaisuudesta.
June 11, 2020
المشكلات النفسية لدى الأطفال اذا لم يتم التعامل معها وحلها في الطفولة تتحول في المستقبل الى حقيقة وأوهام
اول رواية للهيئة العامة للكتاب في سوريا بتعجبني بعد معاناة طويلة مع ورايات مملة وترجمة كارثية هي الأفضل
اول رواية للهيئة العامة للكتاب في سوريا بتعجبني بعد معاناة طويلة مع ورايات مملة وترجمة كارثية هي الأفضل
November 26, 2020
It's one of those sci-fi things I don't understand but love unconditionally. Although the writing is a bit of a drag, I love the ending. It's amazing, pretty, I don't understand at all but I'm happy about it.
I think I just have the things with paths, or in this case, rails not taken, I guess.
I think I just have the things with paths, or in this case, rails not taken, I guess.
January 4, 2022
Today's read: "Where the Trains Turn" by Finnish author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. A supernatural, psychological thriller novella.
I don't know what to tell you about this one that doesn't give it away. There are trains. Go read it.
I don't know what to tell you about this one that doesn't give it away. There are trains. Go read it.
December 25, 2015
This story was so close to being perfect for me. The only thing holding me back from absolutely adoring this story is how insanely unreasonable the mother is in the first section of the story.
"My son is imagining that trains are trying to kill him, because his father got run over by one? Let's not try psychiatric care - I'll look like a failure in front of all the other parents who I almost never talk to anyway. No...no, the best way to handle this situation is to make sure he's got absolutely no fiction in his life. Ever. Into the furnace with all his books! *whomp!*
Okay, so it wasn't really phrased like that. But that's what happened. And it really, really bugged me.
Like I said, though, that was my only real gripe. I loved everything else.
Story time!
Part of my childhood was spent living in a trailer park in Georgia. There were railroad tracks very close to where we were, and my dad would often take me and my oldest brother to watch the trains at night. We'd spend hours late at night, just following the tracks along the woods, waiting for a train to pass so he could call out the various types of cars.
These nighttime walks always felt surreal to me - maybe it was a combination of being awake at an hour I wasn't used to, and the dead quiet of the woods before a train would come flying past.
In retrospect, I have no clue why my dad thought that dragging a 7 year old and a 5 year old into the woods in the middle of the night, to stand a few feet away from train tracks was in any way a good idea. More than a few outings ended with my brother in tears, because he was convinced that we were all going to be eaten by raccoons. (Then again, he was convinced most animals would eat him, if they were given a chance.)
But, the memory of those nighttime walks makes Where the Trains Turn speak to me on a personal level. The imagery of the trains at night in the woods, and the comparisons to dragons hit me just right.
So, take this review for what it is - a completely subjective look at why this story worked so well for me.
"My son is imagining that trains are trying to kill him, because his father got run over by one? Let's not try psychiatric care - I'll look like a failure in front of all the other parents who I almost never talk to anyway. No...no, the best way to handle this situation is to make sure he's got absolutely no fiction in his life. Ever. Into the furnace with all his books! *whomp!*
Okay, so it wasn't really phrased like that. But that's what happened. And it really, really bugged me.
Like I said, though, that was my only real gripe. I loved everything else.
Story time!
Part of my childhood was spent living in a trailer park in Georgia. There were railroad tracks very close to where we were, and my dad would often take me and my oldest brother to watch the trains at night. We'd spend hours late at night, just following the tracks along the woods, waiting for a train to pass so he could call out the various types of cars.
These nighttime walks always felt surreal to me - maybe it was a combination of being awake at an hour I wasn't used to, and the dead quiet of the woods before a train would come flying past.
In retrospect, I have no clue why my dad thought that dragging a 7 year old and a 5 year old into the woods in the middle of the night, to stand a few feet away from train tracks was in any way a good idea. More than a few outings ended with my brother in tears, because he was convinced that we were all going to be eaten by raccoons. (Then again, he was convinced most animals would eat him, if they were given a chance.)
But, the memory of those nighttime walks makes Where the Trains Turn speak to me on a personal level. The imagery of the trains at night in the woods, and the comparisons to dragons hit me just right.
So, take this review for what it is - a completely subjective look at why this story worked so well for me.
November 24, 2014
Tämä novellikokoelma toimi ensimmäisenä kosketuksenani suomalaiseen tieteis- ja fantasiakirjallisuuteen. Odotukseni eivät olleet suoraan sanottuna kovinkaan korkealla - oletusarvoisesti odotan (tai odotin) suomalaiselta kirjallisuudelta törkeästi samaa kuin näkemiltäni suomalaisilta elokuvilta, eli lähinnä tasapaksuisuutta ja mielikuvituksetonta arkipäiväisyyttä. Nyt tuo oletus sai kyytiä tämän kokoelman ansiosta. Suorastaan innostuin suomalaisesta kirjallisuudesta!
Tässä Jääskeläisen tieteislehdissä julkaistujen novellien kokoelmassa viehättivät eniten kirjan kaksi ensimmäistä kertomusta, eli nimikkonovelli (Missä junat kääntyvät) sekä Pinnan alla Toiseus piilee. Ensiksi mainitussa viehätti niinkin arkisen asian kuin junien luonteen muuttaminen suorastaan myyttisiin mittasuhteisiin, jälkimmäisessä konsepti ihmiskunnan lähes täydellisestä vieraantuminen oikeista luonnonilmiöistä ja -olennoista. Toki minua myös hykerrytti jälkimmäisen kertomuksen humanistinen maailmanjärjestys, joka nosti kasvoilleni irvikissamaisia virnistyksiä, sillä valmistuin juuri itse humanistisesta tiedekunnasta.
Jokainen kertomus kuitenkin osui ja upposi, vaikka kaksi niistä nousivatkin mielessäni ylitse muiden. Neljä tähteä viiden sijaan tuleekin lähinnä siitä, että muutama kertomus (Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajattaren kanssa, Perheterapiaa ja Olisimmepa mekin täällä) herätti mielenkiintoni yksinomaan konseptin kautta. Hahmot ja heidän elämänsä ei jaksanut minua noissa stooreissa kiinnostaa. Maailmat, joissa he elivät, jäivät sen sijaan kutkuttamaan. Jääskeläinen toisti unien ja ajan teemoja tarinoissaan, tutkaillen aiheita hyvin monipuolisesti. Ihailin suuresti tätä luovuutta lukiessani, inspiroituen itsekin. Ehkäpä jotkut novelleista lukemistani konsepteista tulevat muodossa tai toisessa esiintymään vielä joskus kavereille vetämissäni roolipeleissä.
Suosittelen lämpimästi! Konseptuaalisesti täyden viiden tähden lukukokemus.
Tässä Jääskeläisen tieteislehdissä julkaistujen novellien kokoelmassa viehättivät eniten kirjan kaksi ensimmäistä kertomusta, eli nimikkonovelli (Missä junat kääntyvät) sekä Pinnan alla Toiseus piilee. Ensiksi mainitussa viehätti niinkin arkisen asian kuin junien luonteen muuttaminen suorastaan myyttisiin mittasuhteisiin, jälkimmäisessä konsepti ihmiskunnan lähes täydellisestä vieraantuminen oikeista luonnonilmiöistä ja -olennoista. Toki minua myös hykerrytti jälkimmäisen kertomuksen humanistinen maailmanjärjestys, joka nosti kasvoilleni irvikissamaisia virnistyksiä, sillä valmistuin juuri itse humanistisesta tiedekunnasta.
Jokainen kertomus kuitenkin osui ja upposi, vaikka kaksi niistä nousivatkin mielessäni ylitse muiden. Neljä tähteä viiden sijaan tuleekin lähinnä siitä, että muutama kertomus (Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajattaren kanssa, Perheterapiaa ja Olisimmepa mekin täällä) herätti mielenkiintoni yksinomaan konseptin kautta. Hahmot ja heidän elämänsä ei jaksanut minua noissa stooreissa kiinnostaa. Maailmat, joissa he elivät, jäivät sen sijaan kutkuttamaan. Jääskeläinen toisti unien ja ajan teemoja tarinoissaan, tutkaillen aiheita hyvin monipuolisesti. Ihailin suuresti tätä luovuutta lukiessani, inspiroituen itsekin. Ehkäpä jotkut novelleista lukemistani konsepteista tulevat muodossa tai toisessa esiintymään vielä joskus kavereille vetämissäni roolipeleissä.
Suosittelen lämpimästi! Konseptuaalisesti täyden viiden tähden lukukokemus.
April 9, 2016
This story really didn’t work for me. And unlike for some other people, not because of the translation, which was fine. Not what I'm used to for contemporary English, maybe, but variety is good, and the more voices we have in genre fiction, the more variety of experience we get.
But this story didn't work for me.
The main character is a micro-controlling, emotionally stunted mother who crushes the imagination and childhood out her son after the death of his more or less absentee father, car destroyed by a train. When a freak accident, also involving a train, injures her adult son (now a brilliant young lawyer) and sends him back into a weird state where he’s partly a nine year-old boy and partly an adult, with basically all of the memories missing in between, she has to adapt to being a mother again. Just maybe, she’s better at it the second time around.
Except now she’s fairly sure there’s something wrong with him that isn’t just about having too much (to her mind) imagination. He wants revenge against the train that killed his father, because it tried to kill them both earlier that same day. And he’s done his research so he knows where to find it, conveniently only a few kilometres from their house.
Or is it all in his re-instated imagination?
Or is he just a figment of his mother’s imagination?
And here we come to my real problem with this story: I don’t think there’s actually a speculative element outside of the minds of the two primary characters, and the author never gives me a reason to think there might be. I spent the entire story waiting for them to think a train they were standing beside wanted to kill them and so they blow it up before it can. And that changes the past. Or it doesn't.
A character in a story having a fantasy, or just a really wild imagination, doesn’t make it a fantasy story. And it certainly doesn’t endear the story to me when I’m reading it in a collection of fantasy and science fiction stories.
But this story didn't work for me.
The main character is a micro-controlling, emotionally stunted mother who crushes the imagination and childhood out her son after the death of his more or less absentee father, car destroyed by a train. When a freak accident, also involving a train, injures her adult son (now a brilliant young lawyer) and sends him back into a weird state where he’s partly a nine year-old boy and partly an adult, with basically all of the memories missing in between, she has to adapt to being a mother again. Just maybe, she’s better at it the second time around.
Except now she’s fairly sure there’s something wrong with him that isn’t just about having too much (to her mind) imagination. He wants revenge against the train that killed his father, because it tried to kill them both earlier that same day. And he’s done his research so he knows where to find it, conveniently only a few kilometres from their house.
Or is it all in his re-instated imagination?
Or is he just a figment of his mother’s imagination?
And here we come to my real problem with this story: I don’t think there’s actually a speculative element outside of the minds of the two primary characters, and the author never gives me a reason to think there might be. I spent the entire story waiting for them to think a train they were standing beside wanted to kill them and so they blow it up before it can. And that changes the past. Or it doesn't.
A character in a story having a fantasy, or just a really wild imagination, doesn’t make it a fantasy story. And it certainly doesn’t endear the story to me when I’m reading it in a collection of fantasy and science fiction stories.
June 6, 2017
I had my hands full coping with the situation. To start, I chased Gunnar off, bleeding with scratches as he was. I acted purely from my spinal cord, as mothers always do in such situations; acted with the rage of a dinosaur in a white summer dress.
OKAY, THIS ONE WAS THE MOST AMAZING -- it was long, but I could have kept going with this novella forever. I loved it so much that I left off my usual status-update reviews of the Tor collection, in favour of writing a full, complete review.
There's an extremely vivid narrator's voice, with her personality just bleeding through each and every line: Emma Nightingale is frosty, sensible, rational almost to the point of mania, but also a little tongue-in-cheek and witty. The story includes maternal feelings; F/F relationships; unexpected twists & turns and experiments with unreliable memory and unreliable narrators and roads-not-taken; and it was REALLY unsettling/frightening at times, featuring probably the scariest trains I have ever read about besides Stephen King's Blaine the Train. It also had a real ending, which not all of the Tor shorts have had (more thoughts on this in my review for the collection).
I've seen that others didn't like it so much because they thought the translation from the Finnish was stilted/awful. But I never noticed it, to be honest -- I thought it fit right in with the narrator's ramrod-rigid personality, her stiff and meticulous care with things. And maybe growing up with a Scandinavian language means I have some unconscious accord with other northern languages?? lol I have no clue. But regardless, I thought it contributed to Emma's characterisation, and I found the whole thing a compelling, frightening, touching read.
Read it here: http://www.tor.com/2014/11/19/where-t...
November 30, 2014
This was an interesting short story (that borders on the novella size booklet) in how it makes you question it. Upon reading it you wonder if this locomotive carries sentience of the human or otherworldly kind. Is it the embodiment of a demon, time, or death itself conducting this? The ending leaves the readers wondering on the character of Emma's narrative (or even sanity). Emma appears to be rational-minded, and on another holds to inherent questionings of the irrational things. Anachronistic things appear that suggest time being blurred or erased here. In a fable-like sense you could take it differently too. Such as a controlling, overbearing mother who because of traumatic events choses to bring down a more logical thinking (very left-minded) upon a naturally creative, imaginative child (who's very right-minded). Anyone who has had a person switch their pencil to their right hand from the left probably may see some odd semblance in it. It can be stifling and crushing to hear you may not be doing the right things. In this story though the past doesn't become forgotten or changed to logic so easily. Eventually the mother has to come to some terms with it, and let her son make his own choices. She too, has to reconcile with her own past. I think you can take a lot from this story not just in the sense that could be about a ghostly train, but also about the relationship of a mother and her son.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews