The Paris Express

Set on October 22, 1895, the novel follows the passengers and crew of an express train as it travels 326 kilometers from the coastal resort town of Granville, Normandy, to Paris-Montparnasse Station. The narrative is structured around the train's stops and departures and intermittently narrated by the personified voice of Engine 721 herself, who senses danger aboard and warns the reader that "what's remarkable about this train is that she's heading straight for disaster" (26).

At half past eight, Mado Pelletier, a stocky, androgynous twenty-one-year-old in a collar, tie, and boxy skirt, stands outside Granville Station unable to board. She grew up in a single room behind her family's greengrocery in Paris, where her paralyzed father died in his chair and her mother endured over a dozen failed pregnancies. Since walking out of school, Mado has tried dozens of hopeless jobs and embraced anarchism, fueled by voracious reading and her father's conviction that capitalists and politicians cause working-class suffering. Her lunch bucket conceals a homemade bomb: nails, ground match heads mixed with charcoal, saltpetre, and sugar, and two vials of acid plugged with cotton. Inverting the bucket will cause the acids to eat through the cotton and ignite the explosive. She chose this date because it is the opening of the new session of the National Assembly, when deputies would be riding trains back to Paris.

Also boarding at Granville is Maurice Marland, a seven-and-a-half-year-old boy making his first solo rail journey to Dreux. On the footplate, driver Guillaume Pellerin, a respected thirty-five-year-old, and his stoker, Victor Garnier, prepare Engine 721. The inseparable partners aim to run at the "Company notch," the midpoint of power and fuel economy, to maximize their Christmas bonus. Senior Guard Léon Mariette rides in a lantern-shaped lookout atop the front baggage van, while junior guard Jean Le Goff manages passengers at the rear.

Among the roughly one hundred passengers, Blonska, a sixty-year-old Russian émigré who has a spinal condition and wears an orthopaedic corset, settles into Third Class. She works part-time as a librarian at the Comédie-Française, France's oldest theater company, and serves as a volunteer broker of charity for wealthy Parisian ladies. In Second Class, Henry Tanner, an African American painter, sits alone, relieved by the absence of racial segregation on French trains. In First Class, Marcelle de Heredia, a twenty-two-year-old physiology student and daughter of a retired Cuban-born politician, shares a carriage with the automobile manufacturer Émile Levassor; his wife, Louise Sarazin-Levassor; their sickly seventeen-year-old daughter, Jeanne; and Fulgence Bienvenüe, an engineer who lost his arm in a railway accident and dreams of building an underground transit system for Paris. Marcelle quietly suspects Jeanne has leukaemia but is rebuffed when she raises the possibility with Louise, who calls her "a stupid girl with notions" (96).

At Vire, Mado switches to Front Third, directly beside First Class, and asks whether any important figures are aboard. Alice Guy, a twenty-two-year-old secretary at the camera firm Gaumont and Company, also boards; she has been developing an idea to use cameras not for scientific documentation but to tell stories through moving pictures. As the journey continues, Blonska's carriage fills with passengers including Hakim, a North African coffee seller, and Madame Baudin, a live-in maid separated from her family. At Flers, a plump blonde woman named Cécile Langlois squeezes in beside Mado; Blonska learns Cécile is pregnant, a widow whose young lover was sent to Madagascar for military service before they could marry. News arrives of an unscheduled halt at Briouze for a deputy from Orne, and Jean Le Goff casually tells Mado, whose face lights up.

At Briouze, a private carriage is hitched on for Albert Christophle, a sixty-five-year-old deputy and bank governor. Also boarding are Jules-Félix Gévelot, a fellow deputy and ammunition manufacturer, and his wife's party. Henry Tanner, galvanized by a glimpse of Marcelle, dashes into her carriage and sits in mortified silence. Mado, learning two deputies are aboard, picks up her lunch bucket to invert it, but Jean mentions a third deputy will board at Surdon. She hesitates and sets the device down.

Between stops, Blonska and Mado debate politics. Mado rails against privilege; Blonska, sympathetic but skeptical of revolution, urges that leaving "the dirty world a little cleaner than we found it" (146) is a worthy aim. At Surdon, the third deputy boards. Henry and Marcelle finally speak, discovering parallels: both have fathers of color who faced public bigotry. They share lunch and a deepening intimacy. Meanwhile, Blonska's unease about Mado crystallizes into near-certainty. Mado's insistent questions about the deputies, her refusal to eat, and her grip on the lunch bucket all converge. Blonska tries desperately to warn Jean Le Goff, but Mado cuts her off. The two women lock stares, and Mado holds up the bucket: "Get down yourself if you like. I won't stop you" (198). Blonska stays.

At Dreux, Maurice wakes to discover he has slept through his stop. Louise Sarazin-Levassor approaches Marcelle, apologizes for her earlier cruelty, and asks her to explain what leukaemia means. Marcelle answers as plainly as she can but cannot bring herself to state there is no cure. Mado's plan solidifies: She will detonate the bomb as the Express enters Montparnasse, striking the symbolic heart of French power. But Cécile, the pregnant woman who boarded at Flers, goes into active labor. Blonska and Madame Baudin coach her through contractions. The baby's head crowns, but the shoulder becomes stuck. In desperation, Blonska calls out to Mado by name and begs her to help, knowing the girl has experience from her mother's deliveries. After a frozen moment, Mado sets the lunch bucket under the bench, sloshes brandy over her hands, and pushes two fingers into the birth canal to free the trapped shoulder.

On the footplate, Guillaume has been pushing the train past 60 kilometers per hour to make up lost time. As Engine 721 races toward Montparnasse, Victor applies the Westinghouse air brake. Nothing happens. The brake has catastrophically failed. Victor reverses steam; Guillaume cranks the hand brake and sounds the emergency whistle. Jean Le Goff responds instantly at the rear, but Léon Mariette in the front van has dozed off and manages only one turn of his brake before impact. Guillaume screams "Jump!" and launches himself off the footplate into a pile of mailbags while Victor grips the rail and stays.

Engine 721 bursts through the station, pierces the front wall, and plunges nose-first through the façade to the square below. In Place de Rennes, falling debris crushes newspaper seller Marie Haguillard, the sole fatality. Inside the train, the impact is felt as a hard jolt. Mado's lunch bucket tips, but Madame Baudin unknowingly catches it and stands it upright. Cécile's baby shoots out into Mado's skirt, pale and limp, then wailing. Mado places the infant on Cécile's chest, weeping.

The passengers emerge largely uninjured. Alice Guy retrieves the camera and extracts a promise from her boss to let her borrow it. Marcelle and Henry clasp hands briefly before parting. Mado picks up her lunch bucket, meets Blonska's eyes one last time, and walks to a rubbish bin. She tucks the acid vials into her pocket, empties the explosive mixture, and sets the empty bucket down. Staring at the locomotive embedded nose-down in the square, she reflects that her twenty-one years may have always been leading not to the bombing but to the choice not to bomb. Echoing Blonska's words, she resolves to leave the world a little cleaner than she found it and walks away. A photographer from a postcard firm frames the iconic image of the engine plunging from the shattered wall, deliberately excluding Marie Haguillard's remains to create an enduring image of catastrophe.

An Author's Note explains that the Montparnasse Derailment was technically minor: No passengers or crew died, and Marie Haguillard was the sole fatality. Because her partner was not legally married to her, the railway company reduced its promised support to a pittance. The note traces the fates of the real historical figures woven into the novel, many of whom went on to remarkable lives in science, art, film, and politics, while others died young.