Dealing as it does with family dysfunction, childhood trauma, regret, secrets and loss, this book should have made more of an impact on me than it in fact did. I largely remained unengaged with the characters, although their plight is described sensitively and perceptively. Constantly shifting in time, place and perspective, I found the narrative disjointed and with each change of scene had to take stock of who was now the protagonist. The novel is cleverly constructed, held together by the eponymous Malma Station, through which all the characters pass, but the reveal at the end was underwhelming and didn’t come as a big shock, nor did the fate of one of the characters, which seemed almost farcically predictable. I didn’t find the characters fully fleshed out or three-dimensional and this perhaps was the reason for my distance from them. Well, written and well-plotted, intelligent and insightful, the novel ultimately left me on the outside looking in.

DNF - I was sorry that this wasn't a better fit but, I'm sure that other readers will find their ideal book in this story.

The timeline in Malma Station spans decades and the timelines unfold as the story focuses on three different characters and their journeys. It focuses on childhood trauma and how it affects adulthood. I found all the characters fully fleshed out and I particularly enjoyed Harriet. This novel is very well written and the story deals with love, pain, and survival. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Malma Station and the journeys it brought me on.

This is an intense read with changing perspectives and timelines, the narrative structure is complex and non-linear. It is a tale of love, pain and survival in circumstances that are so ordinary, we could all encounter and empathise with. However, these circumstances assume extraordinary qualities as they shape the lives of our main characters, sending them on a path of survival or destruction.

As in his previous novel ‘The Survivors’, Schulman focuses on dysfunctional families and his explorations take the reader back to the place of childhood where it all begins. At the centre of the novel is Harriet, who after her parents’ separation - when she was about 10 – continues to live with her dad who would have preferred to ‘keep’ his other daughter, but so did her mother. This primal experience of rejection is deeply embedded in Harriet’s psyche and determines much of her adult life.

She marries Oscar – a man by character very similar to that of her dad, emotionally very restraint and like her dad, he loves her but does not understand her. Their relationship fails and their daughter, Yana, is – as this was the case for her mother at a similar age - left with a father with whom she has a complex and difficult relationship.
It is three train journeys, the build-up to them and the memories evoked by them, that provide the complex background to the story around Harriet, Oscar and Yana. They are undertaken by Harriet and her dad, Harriet and Oscar and the third one by Yana, in an attempt to understand better what happened to them as a family and to free herself from the shackles of her past. They all lead to Malma Station.

Schulman’s novel is clever, perceptive and cuts deep – I loved it.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Fleet / Hachette for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Alex Schulman’s Malma Station follows three journeys to the eponymous station deep in the Swedish countryside, separated by several decades. Harriet and her father are planning to bury the remains of the pet rabbit bought to console her when her mother left taking Harriet’s sister with her. Decades later Oskar and his beautiful, mercurial wife are following the same journey after a devastating row, a journey from which Oskar returns but not his wife. When he dies, his long-estranged daughter finds a set of photographs including one of her mother as a child which leads her to buy a ticket to Malma Station in the hope of solving a mystery.

Schulman alternates these timelines unfolding his story from three different perspectives, each narrative illuminating the other through characters’ memories and reflections, in particular childhood incidents and how their effects radiate out into adulthood. As quietly gripping as his previous book, The Survivors, it’s a cleverly constructed novel, sensitive and perceptive, with a less dramatic but equally surprising reveal at the end.