Night Train to Nykøbing

by Kristjana Gunnars

A woman hopelessly in love boards the night train to NykA, bing, Denmark, not knowing if the lover she leaves behind will ever be with her again. Then, through attempts to write her distant lover a letter she knows will never be sent, she recounts a long vigil, inspired by love, and her conspiracy with a waiting heart. Night Train to NykA, bing is a transformative tale that articulates the dense codes of love and the intensity of a life on the edge of abandonment. But this also is a story of return, finally to a heart that has wandered through the desert of time.

Genres: Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[Vika · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Like The Rose Garden I find myself looking into a sort of mirrored life: reading Clarice Lispector at the Vancouver airport; spending Christmas with semi estranged Scandinavian relatives, thinking of French movies where the main woman is a victim of men’s affairs etc etc. Of course there’s a lot that is above me, since the narrator has a charming and intriguing life, and I’m just in my room…

I’m still undecided on whether or not I like how the text is divided - semi abstract semi linear? It both makes sense and can be distracting but I think it for some reason makes it feel more intimate.

Even though I lack the character and drive to have this sort of story/life, I loved reading the short passages from Lispector and their implications of loneliness as a space for self cultivation: “darkness is my cultural broth”/ “I am almost free of myself… I let myself happen”/ “I’m making myself. I’ll make myself until I reach the core”/ “… I’m alone. I and my freedom”. Love Gunnars and Lispector; I wish I was an active participant in my life but I’m so sorry ladies I lack self discipline and drive :(

[Tung · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this novella (at 95 pages, it isn’t a novel) comes from the primary framework of the plot: a woman boards a train headed to Nykobing, Denmark and leaves behind her lover at the station. Which leads me to my one massive criticism of the book: there is nothing else to the plot whatsoever. The bulk of this story is a series of snippets of the woman’s thought processes and emotions. And these thoughts and emotions are spread throughout time. We get pieces and memories of the woman’s life with her lover and with relatives before and after the train station event. We also get snippets that occur all over the globe: some of these snippets are from Canada, and the others all over Europe (Paris to Denmark to Norway). But nothing really happens. We don’t get an explanation of why they part, or how they met, or any other actual storyline. I get the point that Gunnars is trying to convey: that our lives – and especially our lives within complex relationships – are not linear, and our relationships are often combinations of these non-linear events and feelings and memories. That doesn’t make the thinness of this novella’s plot any better. In the book, the main character often shares her thoughts about books she has read, and at the end of the book she shares the following: “I put down the book by Clarise Lispector I have been reading all along. The Stream of Life. It is a short book, only seventy pages. It is chaotic and formless. There is no pattern or development.” That perfectly captures Gunnars’ own work. I would rate this book lower, except the prose is really pretty terrific. Gunnars has written several collections of poetry, and you can certainly see her poet’s background in the prose. Every sentence is concise, with well-chosen words. Paragraphs were filled with evocative language, with whole sentences that on their own could stand as poems. A beautifully-written, but ultimately shallow read.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

my review on lønningspils

https://lonningspils.ca/2025/10/11/ni...

[Mark Lisac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a novel, not even a novella, given its lack of a straight-line narrative. More like fragments of poetry assembled in somewhat random order between a beginning and an end (enigmatic as the end is). The poetic prose —and it's a plain, unforced, accessible poetry — gives the book its allure. I'd be tempted to give it 4 stars except that I didn't like the way quotations from various authors kept popping up, even if the narrator does teach literature at a university. Is there a point to the story? The narrator mentions a theory that our expectations determine how our worlds unfold. She seems to decide in the end that it's best not to have expectations and simply to meet life as courageously and joyfully as possible. (No guarantee that this interpretation is correct.) Enjoyed the book and was impressed at Gunnars' ability to make simple sentences attractive and meaningful, although I was glad it was a one-day read.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Night Train to Nykøbing" by Kristjana Gunnars is an episodic novella. There are no chapters. The episodes are short, often only a few paragraphs. The story is simple but made convoluted by jumping between British Columbia and Denmark and by rearranging the chronology. The gist of the story is straight forward. The narrator wonders if she has made a mistake. Should she commit to her fiance or not? There is no dramatic tension. There is a lot of odd quotes from "how-to-write" books. The little episodes are informative in their own right, but the whole doesn't equal the sum of the pieces.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's written in a very soothing manner, but for such a small book it felt like ages were passing as I read it. Perhaps it has an identity crisis: a book that seems like it would rather be poetry than prose. It felt like I wasn't getting anywhere fast trying to read this.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Called a novel, the book is very slim, less than a hundred small pages, so more a novella. The author was born in Iceland and is of Scandinavian heritage but is a Canadian citizen. The book has an evocative, almost film noir cover: a station platform, steam billowing from the engine into the night, a silhouetted figure with a bag in each hand. I bought the book some years ago (it’s copyrighted 1998) and only picked it up recently because I was going away for the weekend and knew I would finish the book I was taking so needed something else to the ready. Its slenderness was a decisive trait as I sifted through the stacks of unread books on the dining room bookshelf.

Despite all this near randomness Night Train to Nykobing is a perfect companion read to B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates. Gunnars’ protagonist is a female academic with an ancestry similar to hers who gives up two homes in western Canada to pursue a relationship with a new lover. The tale is told in small vignettes that seem to bounce back and forth across time fairly randomly, so the effect is of a prose mosaic with bound signatures. But sometimes we are before the relationship resolves itself, sometimes after it. Sometimes we are with them together in various places but most often we are with her waiting, her mind tracking the strands of her life leading into and out of the now and why of her life.

Also like Johnson with The Unfortunates the writer is aware that she is writing a book and knows that the reader therefore is reading one and addresses us directly, shares sources and rationales. Unlike Johnson, she is sure of herself, more reflective and less whiney—Johnson has an agitated sureness, the blustery aggressiveness of someone in a bar whose attitude rather than argument is the stronger force in his case. Her prose is less antsy, more surefooted over the shifting landscapes of British Columbia, Denmark, Paris, and the interior landscape of waiting.

“To say what is. To be in my own story and not someone else’s. That is what I saw in Clarise Lispector’s book. She seized her own story and held it. The way a tiny Rufous Hummingbird holds on to the naked branch below. The branch stand straight into the sky without leaves, and on the very tip is a red-throated hummingbird, ticking for a new aerial display. It is his desire to fling straight up and then throw himself down at breakneck speed. I know it is not an easy flight he is about to make. But he will. I know he will.”