Eva Jurczyk: Have You Made Your Acquaintance with Her Novels?

Here’s a new-ish author whom I hadn’t realized is Canadian. Her first two books were The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, which I kept intending to read based on the title alone, and That Night in the Library, which I liked but didn’t love.

But wow, her third book! I’m reading an ARC–requisite thanks to NetGalley, along with the promise of an unbiased review when I finish it, but I’m at a mere 13%.

The premise of 6:40 to Montreal is as follows. A woman writer who’s become wildly successful, albeit not in her intended genre, has been given a one-day return trip from Toronto to Montreal by her smug and self-congratulatory husband. (He posted a photo of their family Christmas, and a note about his own generosity, before the morning coffee was cold.) He was inspired by reading about an author who takes long, same-day trips to force a writing stint without distractions or, in the case of Canada’s VIA rail, WiFi and phone access for significant chunks of the journey.

The husband would very much like his heretofore productive wife to be writing, because she finances his life. Their life, as a family with a young son. But mostly his life.

We learn from hints in this first-person narrative that she is plotting something rather different, and perhaps does not intend to return from the trip.

The opening chapters are brisk and evocative. Already we’ve had a disquieting scene, of an unexpected car crash that she glimpses from her train window. And now the appearance, in her business class compartment, of her nemesis and stalker who learned of the trip via the husband’s social media.

I’m enthralled. I haven’t been this excited about a new novel/author in some time, and it’s very convenient for me that this is a book about travelling between Ontario and Quebec.

Trains are wonderful, and old-timey trains have a special mystique. When we were little, my sister and I loved Ottawa’s Science and Technology Museum, with its room of retired train cars. You could climb aboard and peek into the luxurious accoutrements of the carriages of yore.

Locomotive Hall apparently still exists, which is a thrill on this grey Friday morning as the cherry trees are just beginning to unfurl their blossoms. I’d post a photo, but the rest of Canada is blanketed with snow, so it seems unkind.

And one can hold parties! Decided: must someday host a gala in Locomotive Hall. Book launch, perhaps?

In the meanwhile, put in your advance order for Jurczyk’s first very-Canadian book, out in late September. I’m going to go back to see what I missed in her debut novel and, if time permits, what I may have overlooked as merits in her second work.

Even her author bio is fun, on the dreaded big A-that-is-not-to-be-named. “Eva Jurczyk was born in a mining town in Poland and wound up halfway around the world in a Canadian city that often masquerades as New York in the movies. As her day job, she buys books, building library collections for the University of Toronto Libraries. She travels to Paris whenever the wind is good but currently lives with her husband, son, and collections of books in Toronto, Canada.”

And here’s a good piece about her first novel from U of T’s student paper, The Varsity, a news source that I’ve been recalling with particular fondness this week.