Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel

not so strong in story telling. events are too accidental. (the hero meets the Portuguese girl by accident, finds the book written by the dead hero by accident, makes acquaintances that know the dead hero partly by accident.
i believe that philosophers are not very good at writing novels. they're too preoccupied with making statements and philosophical observations, and leave no room for the readers to come to their own conclusions.
also, i did not like the super hero, the Prado guy. he was a self centered and selfish snob who ruined his sister's and his wife's lives.
i think the movie was much better, though more sentimental, than the book, despite all the changes it had made in the story, like the fact that Prado was young when he met the girl with amazing memory, or the younger sister, Maria Joao, Fatima are not mentioned in the film, and the ending is nothing like the book.

The story is an intellectual challenge as it progresses. The characters are a cross section of humanity, for the most part. I was delighted to see the movie of the same name with Jeremy Irons. It was a near-perfect fit.

Start with the most boring life on continental Europe who knows ancient DEAD languages like the back of his hand, add a Portugese revolutionary/medical doctor in love with writing and stir lightly and viola! a story of a professor ready for a change in life...

Loved the movie, but struggled with the book.

After seeing the movie, and loving it, I decided to read the book. Perhaps I wanted to test the (virtual) truism that books are normally far superior, with so many layers of plot and character development that simply cannot be packaged into a 90 minute feature. Unfortunately, in this case, the movie is far superior. My main problem with the book is the ponderous, lengthy diatribes, usually in unsent letters from father to son, or mother to son, or son to father, etc. In most cases, we read more than we need to know of the same message in which one family member blames their loved one for ruining their life, for not being honest with them, for "allowing" them to dominate the family, for not understanding how lonely they were, and on and on. It's aggravating. And in most cases, it is sophistry. I am not surprised at all the reviewers here that say the book just could not be completed. Despite the occasional interesting philosophical question, too large part of the book is composed of intra-family kvethcing masquerading as philosophical mediation.

Do yourself a favor: See the movie but skip the book.

MUCH MORE MEAT TO THE STORY; MORE CHARACTERS THAN THE MOVIE BUT IT MISSES THE INTENSITY OF THE MOVIE. I THINK I LIKED THE MOVIE FOR ITS UNCOMPLICATED DIALOG. BOTH SERVE BUT THE MOVIE HELD MY INTEREST AND MOVED ME MORE THAN THE BOOK. THE BOOK FAILED TO PUT LIFE IN THE CHARACTERS AS WELL AS THE DIRECTOR ACCOMPLISHED IN THE MOVIE. JEREMY IRONS HAS THE MOST AMAZING FACE, THERE IS MORE IN A LOOK THAN ANY OTHER ACTOR SAVE ROBERT DENIRO.

One of the worse books I ever finished. The underlying story kept me wanting to find out how Gregorius ends up. But the endless philosophical rantings and lengthy egocentric letters of Prado made it agonizing to get through. I skipped most of them because life is too short to waste on nonsense. I wonder if any of the people who told me they heard it was a good book, actually read it.

Two million copies sold worldwide. No wonder. Perhaps a book for a mature audience only. I regretted coming to the last page and will reread it again, but only after a few months. I prefer Marguerite Yourcenar and Jose Saramago when it comes to the "big" issues, or even Alan Bennett, and the language of "Night Train to Lisbon" does not equal that of either of these other writers. Still, all in all, an inspired and inspiring novel.

Interesting theme, enjoyed how you (the reader) view the evolution of the story from inside the protagonist's head and emotions. All characters were good. Nice perspective on arriving at that stage in life.

I purchased the Kindle version of this book, expecting a usable, readable version of the book. They usually are pretty good.

It was clearly a rough automatic OCR scan of the book. NUMEROUS mistakes, maddening, sometimes several on the same page. Several hundred such mistakes overall, I'd guess. Could often guess the correct text, but sometimes it was total gibberish. Detracted massively from the enjoyment of the book. I'm requesting a refund.

That said, I think this book is way overrated. I don't demand car chases or shoot-outs in my reading, but breathy 'philosophy' with cardboard characters does not a good read make.

**UPDATE**
I deleted the book from my device, then re-downloaded (the earlier comments were related to a download a few months ago). Now, it is a more faithful reproduction of the printed book (somebody must have noticed the above problems) but it is in a font which does not display clearly on my device (a late-model Keyboard Kindle). The italics are even more difficult to read. Would never have finished reading the book in -this- eyestrain font.

Nothing happened. Things were discovered. So what? You kept reading to find out. At the end you discover even that vague question had no answer. For goodness sake go for a walk in the sunshine rather than read this self indulgent rubbish.

An intense study of the human mind. What makes one leave everything one owns to travel to another place to research a book about another's life? One becomes another person in their precepts. For a language major this book is excellent.

This is a challenging read. Maybe it's the translation? Maybe it's the editing - or lack of it? There is far too much talk and not enough tension or drama or indeed, life! Do, we ever find out what Gregorius thinks? This slow protracted story did not engage me as a reader.

This is a novel wriiten by a professor of philosophy who should probably restrict himself to writing philosophy textbooks. The book began so hopefully and within a hundred pages became an incredible bore. He preented a cast of implausible characters, one dimentional and equally uninspring. For further reading: I would recommend The Elegance of the Hedgehog, another philosophy professor's dud.

The summary sounded good but in reality, it was boring and didn't hold my interest. The characters were very bland and not interesting at all to me.My book club read it and most liked it more than I did.

Raimund Gregorius is exactly how I would imagine a Latin teacher, in fact, he could be the younger version of the Latin teacher that I knew when I was attending the gymnasium here back in 1996. Mr Visser was just like him, a single guy, who loved routine and knew his languages better than one could imagine. He was kind to his students and we all loved him, and I bet most of us still have fond memories of his classes. So yeah, I could totally see mr Gregorius walking around like that and I liked him from the beginning.

I have read the Dutch translation of this book, but I could see that Pascal Mercier has a love for beautiful words. The translation was wonderful and I loved the way the languages were used throughout the whole novel. Sometimes a novel can be really beautiful and poetic in a way that it is impossible not to love it. Yes, I do love reading ‘fast paced and easy written’ novels a lot, but sometimes my mind just wants more food for thought. Beautiful words and some philosophic thoughts are good for my soul from time to time. This was exactly that kind of story.

Raimond Gregorius is searching for people who have known the author (Amadeu de Prado) of a Portuguese book he has found in a bookstore in Bern. In the beginning I found it really exciting to read about the life, friends and family of de Prado, but halfway through the book I desperately wanted to know more about Raimond Gregorius himself. Fortunately the author seems to agree and he has added some background information and some thoughts of Gregorius to the story. Suddenly you get to see life and Lissabon through his eyes.

Amadeu de Prado’s words kind of touched my soul. I can relate to a lot of the topics, such as loneliness, being homesick or how well we actually know ourselves and others. Those are things I have often thought about myself. I could have written those down, as if they were a conversation with myself, but I have always kept those words inside me. It is lovely that Pascal Mercier has found a way, a story, to fit them in. It was really nice to read that and it makes me wonder if I should write more often. It somehow made me realize how much I think about stuff and how I am keeping it all to myself. I do appreciate it when a book makes me think.

While the life of Amadeu de Prado is over, Gregorius still has his in front of him. I would have loved to know what would happen next. It seems to have ended too soon. On the other hand, this story wasn’t just about Gregorius and his journey and the story had to end somewhere. I guess what happens next is not what’s important here. The important thing is that Gregorius actually got up and left his old life, that he finally had the courage to explore something else and that he thought about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. It is something that many people dream about and most people are too scared to actually proceed. After all, you know what you’ve got right now and what’s out there is a big mystery…

This book takes the fairly standard concept of a person going through a mid life crisis and doing something out of character (because there is a shortage of such stories ya know...) and while nothing really happens I found it a slowly told though nicely written/translated work. The author is apparently Swiss and at the time he wrote it a professor of philosophy. It shows.

The meat of the story is a lecturer fellow having a very contrived and actually quite silly random meeting with a Portuguese woman and that and some other coincidences lead him to find a book that makes such an impression on him it forces him to re-evaluate his life. The character is presented as a very dull and abstemious kind of chap whose picture could be used to illustrate the word 'non-descript' in the dictionary. This is battered into the reader fairly heavily at first to make sure we all can grasp that his actions are out of character. And those actions are to basically feel compelled to learn more about the author of the book that has left such a mark on him. Now, as a concept that's not too far fetched, plenty of people visit places where famous authors have lived, or where popular stories were set. So that wasn't so hard to swallow but the issue is the very slow way the whole book played out as the main character - Gregorius - gradually teases out the life of the author and the people who knew him.

It turns out that the author of this imaginary book that Gregorius becomes obsessed with was a complicated genius who ended up working for the Portuguese resistance against the dictator Salazar. It adds considerable spice to the book and as he pieces together the interplay between people he comes to a good understanding of the author and his life. The trick is that much of the book is telling a tale of one man and his circle of friends via the prism of Gregorius. It's not a bad way of doing things given it's a little different but a lot of the tension falls flat when so little really happened in the past for Gregorius to dig up. It's all a bit of an anti-climax. And the fact that page after page of the book is taken up with passages from the book that has inspired him and/or letters to or from the different players in the tale it can bog things down somewhat. If perhaps the philosophic ramblings were then used by Gregorius to trawl through his own life experiences it would speak more effectively to the introspective reader. But this angle is barely pursued. Because of this the book leaves the reader trawling through the work reading a seemingly slightly implausible story about a tortured pseudo-intellectual being told at one step remove. Not a recipe for success.

Basically if you can handle the brutally honest examination of the foibles of a person with a brilliant mind told 30 years later through the investigations of a very boring person (Gregorius) then you have what it takes to really enjoy this book. It is understandable that its dredging up of the past and the way it looks at choices made and how they shape our future lives and future selves is going to strike a chord with a fair number of people. The author has laid bare so many painful self doubts that humans are prone to and this will always garner a response - even if revulsion from those who'd 'rather not go there' but the fact that there is no real big reveal and the way the book doesn't really finish it just stops does detract from any glimmer of a resolution. That in itself could be considered a good thing. Forcing the reader to ponder their own need for closure etc is not a bad thing. It just seems poorly done here, or a product of an author who just couldn't figure out how to end 400+ pages of rambling internal self examination.

Personal vibe? I'm glad I read this book. It had good use of language and certain aspects of style, such as the treatment of dialogue, were interesting to me. Some of the philosophical passages definitely have worth which given the 'day job' of the author is hardly a surprise. But there was too little meat on the bone and a character study conducted thirty years after the main events through the prism of a staggeringly unengaging third person is too many bridges to cross.

This book was extremely boring and it took me months to finish it: I kept putting it down to read other things and would go back to read a few pages and then put it down again in irritation. Only my compulsive need to finish what I start got me to the totally unsatisfactory end.
It is a long-winded exercise in navel-gazing, and uninteresting navel-gazing at that. Nothing happens after the first chapter; it is all introspection after that. I kept thinking that surely there was a twist somewhere or an answer to some of the questions posed about what had happened in the past but really it ends up being a true "nothing burger" with lots and lots of self-important and somewhat pretentious philosophizing around it. The letters were particularly annoying. Honestly, this is one to skip.