Publication Date: January 7, 2025
A train races through a stark summer landscape. Everyone on board is traveling to Malma Station, and no one realizes how their fates are intertwined in this riveting literary suspense.
On board the train to Malma Station are a married couple in crisis, a single dad and his young daughter, and a woman searching for the answer to a mystery her mother left behind. The enigmatic Harriet, the controlling Oskar, and the searching Yana – each of these characters carries within them the scars of what has come before.
Malma Station traces the crooked lines of family and history and shows how memories morph to take new shape, postulating that perhaps the past is actually what we can change, rather than the future. The narrative builds like a train hurtling through time, each chapter a separate car hooking into the next.
Malma Station is at once an enchanting and gut-wrenching novel about family secrets and injustices passed on through generations – and a suspenseful hunt for a truth with the power to change everything.
A train trip serves as a common thread as three narrators take readers on a seemingly unrelated journey.
Malma Station by Alex Schulman introduces a cast of troubled characters embroiled in angst. Chapters alternate between Harriet, Oskar, and Yana.
The challenge for me was understanding how all the parts fit together as a whole. It’s clear that the characters experienced a high level of dysfunction in terms of relationships, both familial and marital. I wanted to empathize with Harriet as she shared stories of her family breaking apart or even with Oskar and the troubles with his wife.
However, even after the connection was revealed, it was challenging to re-engage because the past/present timeline seemed to blur.
Malma Station serves up a story with characters caught up in trying to resolve past hurts.
Alex Schulman is a writer and journalist from Sweden. He has multiple books, one of which was named Book of the Year in Sweden in 2017, and his novel The Survivors, was the first to appear in English.
