A review by saltydough
Train To Budapest by Dacia Maraini

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This book, in my opinion, attempts to hold together too many plot threads at once. Amara, the main character, is sent to Eastern Europe during the Cold War, ostensibly to  cover what is going on there as a journalist for a small Italian publication. This premise is what originally drew me into the book, as I was interested in hearing about the Cold War from the point of view of a character living through it. However, I was disappointed to find that a large majority of the book is spent on her search for her childhood friend/lover, Emanuele. This also leads to many revelations about World War II, which, while somewhat interesting, were not what I had hoped for from this book. When the author finally gets around to Cold War issues, the events take up about 50 pages and seem not to have much consequence for our narrator other than that she is unable to continue her search for Emanuele. This scattered focus results in an unsatisfying and unresolved ending, with our main character in even worse shape than she started. Add that to some awkward wording, probably as a result of translation difficulties, and I was quite disappointed by this book. There were some times when I was genuinely invested,  as well as some genuinely beautiful turns of phrase, but it was overall somewhat of a slog to get through.