Nicolaus sits on a bench living, while his mother almost dies

Nicolaus travels back in time to prevent his sick mother from dying. A comforting story about grief.

by Bas Maliepaard, 15 februari 2024

This is not going to be light fare, as you immediately sense from the first sentences of The Train at Four Past Twelve by Swede Conny Palmkvist. But they are catchy sentences that draw you into the book: 'It is 11:54 PM. And I'm sitting here on a couch living. I'm sitting here living while other people die. Maybe right at this moment. Either now, or now.”

You understand that the main character Nicolaus (12) lives so consciously when it becomes clear that he is in the hospital and his mother is dying there. “Without her asking me if I agree.”

When the time comes, Nicolaus discovers a button in the elevator that was not there before. Here the story takes a magical turn, reminiscent of Yorick Goldewijk's (much more complex) Films that Run Nowhere. Via the button, Nicolaus discovers an old train station in the basement of the hospital. The Last Station, he hears from a woman who receives him there. Trains depart to the past, to the future and to the place where the deceased go.

Heart goosebumps

Nicolaus takes the train to his ninth birthday, because he still feels guilty about the scene he made after receiving a cheaper cell phone than what was on his wish list. During the short time travel he tries to fix that, but also to send his still healthy mother to a doctor as a preventive measure.

Nicolaus travels to the past several times and each time he returns to the hospital just before his mother's death, where almost the same thing happens as the last time, before he gets back into the elevator. What he wants most, to keep his mother alive, doesn't work.

The book therefore reads like a nightmarish course, further enhanced by the mesmerizing style, which makes Nicolaus' despair strongly palpable. He has 'goosebumps', he says somewhere; That's what you get when your heart is cold with sadness.

Nicolaus slowly learns to accept fate through his exhausting time travel. Although Palmkvist explains it a bit too much and at times verges on sentimentality, he offers a comforting and hopeful story about grief, in which you become trapped for a moment and which you cannot easily shake off.