The Last Train
to London by Meg Waite Clayton 464 pages
I
expected a lot after reading the Amazon blurb for this book: “a pre-World War
II-era story with the emotional resonance of “Orphan Train” and “All the Light We Cannot See,” centering on the Kindertransports. Those are two of my
favorite novels in recent years.
This novel covers 1936 to 1940 as Truus
Wijsmuller and her efforts to smuggle Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. The
story is told through two viewpoints and short chapters. Truus and
fifteen-year-old Stephan Neuman.
All Stephan want to do is write plays, go to
the theater and hang out with his new Zofie-Helene, a Christian girl he meets
through his barber. Zofie is a math prodigy. I didn’t understand what she was
saying half of the time, and I think contributed to my unfavorable reponse to
the story.
As the story opens, Stephan and Zofie live in
Vienna, a city on the edge with the imminent threat of a Nazi invasion. The
wander through the city, mostly through a complex cave system, popping up here
and there, that seemed a tad ludacrious to me.
Truus, a member of the Dutch resistance,
begins to smuggle children out of Germany, making more and more trips into the
occupied country. Maybe this is my twenty-first century perspective talking,
but I found that the way she instructed all the children to call her Tante
Truus (Aunt Truus) creepy. I understand that it was necessary given the unforeseeable
encouters they would have, but it made me extremely uneasy. Also, I found her
sections lacking tension; she never seemed to be in real danger, even when she
was escorting thirty children across the border. And that is my biggest
complaint of this novel---lack of tension. Never did I feel thatStephan, his
five-year-old brother Walter, Zofie, Truus or the children were in
life-or-death situations.
Because of the short chapters, I never felt a
real connection to any of the characters.
The most positive aspect of ready this lengthy novel is that the name
Truus Wijsmuller may now be recognized for the great work that she did. Truus
is credited with saving over 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi horrors.
Due to its lack of tension and the inability
to make me connect with the character, “The Last Train to London” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.
