← Jolly July
The Midnight Train
Matt Haig✦Eric’s guide
A tender novel about the moments we'd choose to live again — and whether returning to them is a gift or a trap.
The story
Wilbur, an old man near the end of his life, finds a train that carries him back to the happiest moments of his past — above all a honeymoon in Venice with his late wife, Maggie. Each journey lets him relive a memory but never quite change it, until the question shifts from which days were the best to whether a whole life can be loved, not only its brightest stops.
Read it for the feeling more than the plot: Haig uses a simple fantastical premise — a train back to your happiest moments — to ask what memory is for, and whether a life is measured by its best days or by all of them.
BBefore
- Hold the premise lightly: the train is a device for looking at a whole life, not a puzzle to solve.
- Notice which moments Wilbur reaches for, and which ones he avoids.
- Track the difference between reliving a moment and trying to change it.
WWatch for
- Small sensory details of Venice that carry more weight than the plot events.
- Moments where nostalgia tips into something sadder and more honest.
- How a light, warm voice manages to hold heavy questions about death and regret.
AAfter
- Which moment from your own life would you ask the train to return to?
- Does the book leave you wanting to change the past, or to accept it?
- What does it decide a life's 'best days' actually are?
Warming up The Midnight Train…