We watch the impact of the suicides on the staff in the railway station and on Station, then the background to those committing suicide. Doughty makes theseĬharacters spring to life as we learn from Lisa about the people working at the Her time by imagining their family circumstances. Lisa has names for all the people she watches and she passes He steps off in to the path of an oncoming freight train. OneĮarly November morning, she follows a man to the edge of Platform Seven where Watching the passengers and staff as they go about their daily routines. Confined to the boundaries of Peterborough Station, she loiters around Lisa Evans used to be a secondary school teacher. Resonance as well as being an atmospheric, contemporary ghost story that chills Holding her in the station and how she realises that she has the freedom to doīeautifully written, Platform Seven has depth and emotional Platform Seven is a story about how this woman died, what is Hearing the voice of a woman who is no longer alive. Telling you what she hears and sees at Peterborough Railway station, you are It takes a while to realise that as you listen to her Of wonder at who you are listening to and what her story is. It starts quite slowly all the better to build up a sense Previous work, so I requested it without even reading the blurb. I’d decided to read it because of Louise Doughty’s Of what to expect and then it confounds and delights in equal measure. I love it when I go into a novel without the faintest idea After all, she was the first of the two to die. No one is more desperate to understand what connects them than Lisa Evans herself. Two fatalities in eighteen months – surely they’re connected? She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge. What the man doesn’t realise is that he has company. As he sits on the metal bench at the far end of the platform it is clear his choice is strategic – he’s as far away from the night staff as he can get. The man crossing the covered walkway on this freezing November morning is confident he’s alone. Platform Seven at 4am: Peterborough Railway Station is deserted.

Publication: 22 August 2019 from Faber&Faber

Platform Seven by Louise Doughty