San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2007

ALA Notable Book of 2007

The 5:45 train to Cannes . . .

It links northern Italy with the French Riviera while running like a thread through lives that touch one another in unexpected and often secret ways: Chazz, the heir to a great fortune; GianCarlo, a kindhearted young Italian thief; Anais, who feels the insults of age; and Sophie, a talented young photographer. At the center we find beautiful, bereaved Claudette, wife of the doomed Chazz, making the journey to Cannes, where she, like all the others, remembers her past and draws from it irresolvable feelings of strength and fragility, meaning and emptiness, permanence and loss.

In these linked stories, Tess Uriza Holthe peers deeply into the inner lives of these women and men. Sad and lovely, often at the same time, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes us to places where we are happy to linger, in the world and in the human heart.