The Girl from the Train
Poland, 1944. Jakób Kowalski, a young Polish resistance fighter, plants a bomb intended to destroy a German troop train, but it blows up a train taking Jews to a labour camp instead. Six year-old Gretl is the only survivor, and Jakób takes her home with him, where she is educated at a Catholic school. However, his family can’t keep her for long, so Jakób arranges her adoption by an Afrikaner family in South Africa. Gretl must hide her origins and become the Aryan Protestant child her new family is expecting.
The third-person limited narration alternates between Gretl’s and Jakób’s points of view, which offer a vivid, enjoyable contrast. As Gretl learns to adapt to life in South Africa, Jakób’s anti-Communist beliefs create difficulties for him in Poland. Oddly, while the novel’s setup led me to expect conflicts of many kinds—political, religious, romantic—most of these were fairly easily resolved. Gretl and Jakób are good people who always do the right thing. Their nobility is admirable, if sometimes difficult to relate to. Their shared secrets and Jakóbs guilt save them from being perfect, but only just.
Joubert’s writing style is a little choppy, with many short sentences (though this may be a translation issue) and brief narrative scenes that add little to the story. The era and setting are interesting, but the author seemed to be protecting her characters too much, considering the challenges one would expect from their situations. The ending was also on the sentimental side. I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy a slower pace and don’t require tension in every scene.
