The Christmas Train

The Christmas Train by David Baldacci

I’ve never read one of those Harlequin Romance books.  I’ve heard about them, but never read one, nor do I ever intend to.  As I read David Baldacci’s second “non thriller”, I had two thoughts: 1) this is probably what a Harlequin Romance is like, but 2) A Harlequin Romance, however, can’t possibly be this bad.  This book was awful.

Let’s see if I can regurgitate the plot:  The story centers around Tom Langdon, who is a foreign correspondent (or journalist or something).  He lives in Washington D.C. and is going to see his girlfriend in Los Angles who is a famous “voice over” actress for popular cartoons for Christmas  (I didn’t even realize there were famous voice over actors and actresses).  He needs to take the train, because he’s banned from flying since he had a recent altercation with airport security somewhere, so train traveling is new to him.  

Now, I’ve never taken a train across the country either, so I confess I have no idea what it’s like, but Tom’s traveling experience can be bluntly expressed in two words: Ridiculously unbelievable.   This story was so idiotic, that I literally expected the character to “wake up from a dream” at the end of this story since all of these fantastical events couldn’t possibly happen in real life.

First, all of these strangers seem to immediately bond with one and other.  Each time a passenger strikes up a conversation with another, it’s not like they’ve known each other for two minutes, but rather two decades.  I’m sorry, I can accept that traveling by train is “different” and perhaps “cozier”, but people simply aren’t this revealing about such personal matters to total strangers.  This, I guess, is so Baldacci can tell his tale a little easier, but it simply reeks of being unbelievable.  Sadly, the situations only get more preposterous.  

As Tom begins his journey, he starts to reminisce about his life up to this point in time (lots of free time to think on a train), and he regrets many of his choices, especially around some relationships.  His only other “real” relationship was with a gal named Eleanor, that he lived with for a couple of years while he was overseas.  He thinks a lot about Eleanor.  He almost proposed, but chickened out at the last minute.  Their relationship ended rather abruptly, and Tom isn’t sure why.  He sure does miss Eleanor.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, speaking of unbelievability, who do you think Tom meets on this Christmas train???  Did I mention this story was rather ridiculous?

Well, as Tom and Eleanor reluctantly reconnect on this cross country ride, it’s apparent that there’s still a lot of bad blood, hurt feelings, forced conversation, and arguing.  It’s pretty pathetic.  I seem to recall several arguments that went something like this:

Tom: You still never told me why you left me!

Eleanor: If I had to tell you, it was obvious that our relationship would never work!

Note to couples everywhere that are starting out in a relationship: This is not a good way to resolve conflict.

Anyway, we don’t feel too bad for Tom because, after all, he does have someone new that he is going to see in Los Angeles.  Well, we then see them talk to each other a few times over the phone during the train ride, and it seems Tom’s new love interest is a bit of a shallow, whiney bint.  In case you’re wondering, dear reader, this is so that when Tom and Eleanor do reconnect and rekindle their relationship, you won’t feel too bad for this broken relationship.  His L.A. actress girlfriend then actually manages to meet Tom on the train halfway through the trip and join him rather then simply wait for him in Los Angeles.  I guess this is supposed to make the story more interesting.  To me, it just reeked of implausibility.  

The other aspects of the story aren’t any better.  You see, Tom actually has to connect with another train in Chicago before he can continue his journey to Los Angeles, and for some reason, 95% of the original passengers somehow have the same final destination.  Anyone who’s ever travelled with any type of commercial carrier knows how idiotic this situation would be.  The author casually eliminates the characters that aren’t needed to advance the plot, yet conveniently takes everyone else to California.  Then, somewhere in the mountains of Colorado, the train gets stranded in an avalanche.  Yet our hero Tom boldly goes on a risky rescue mission (with one other passenger - I’ll let you guess which one), and manages to save everyone.  This takes up about 2 1/2 pages.  Yeah.  Right.  Time and time again, you tell yourself that this story simply can’t get any worse.  But it does.

Here’s another note to travelers everywhere:  If there is a “thief” on a train, and the thief continues to steal throughout the long trip over and over again without getting caught, you might want to, you know, lock your door on your compartment.  Or at least safeguard your valuables.  To think that these brained damaged idiotic passengers have the nerve to be surprised when they get their stuff stolen after the third or fourth incident.

By the way, how does a very large python end up on a train outside of a cage or with no apparent owner nor origin?  

Well, our characters essentially end up being dragged to a happy ending kicking and screaming, and you can’t help but think that after the final pages of this story, that their problems are far from over.  I think if I were a college professor and one of my students wrote this story as part of an assignment, I’d give them an “A” for grammar, yet a “C-” for the story.

Being that this is all sappy and romantic, it wouldn’t surprise me if this has somehow been made into one of those movies on the Harlequin channel.  If you do come across this rendition in movie format, I beg of you not to watch.  Do yourself a favor and switch the channel and watch a rerun of “Cosby” instead.  Better yet, just turn the television off and read a book.  Just don’t read this one.