07/05/2026
Anthony Toner, soon to grace the ‘stage’ at Chapters Unplugged, is an avid reader. With his impending visit (on 22 May - don’t miss it) I asked Anthony to recommend a favourite book and he chose the wonderful ‘modern classic’ Train Dreams. (Available of course in Chapters).
Denis Johnston: Train Dreams (published by Granta, 2002)
This has recently been made into a film – but be aware the novel is MUCH better. A good sign for a book is the feeling that you’d like to hold on to it and read it again. I’ve been through this little novella (116 pages) four times, and even the act of pulling it off the shelf this morning makes me feel like diving in again.
It’s the story of Robert Grainer, a man labouring in the forests and wild places of America’s north west in the early 20th century, as the railroad crosses the country and the nation expands westward. His experience of work, love, marriage, fatherhood, loss, redemption - and the sheer strangeness of the landscape and the people he encounters in it – is told in a dreamlike, magical language that is beautiful on the page - and haunting for days and years afterwards in the mind.
A masterpiece, and a true desert island choice for me, right from the first time I read it.
Anthony
