For their second buddy read of the year, Beth and Nils read The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao…

Raya is a lost soul, going through the motions of life without a dream of her own.
One night, on her subway ride home, Raya’s thoughts wander too far. She wakes on the Elsewhere Express, a magical train that offers its passengers a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging. The journey is a chance for Raya to reimagine her life – but only if she finds her compartment before time runs out.

Once aboard, Raya meets an intriguing artist named Q and together they race to find their place on the train, through a boarding car carpeted in meadow grass and along a dining carriage where passengers picnic on lilypads.

But a mysterious stowaway has boarded with them, and with it a dark, malignant magic that threatens to destroy the train. The closer Raya comes to uncovering the stowaway’s identity, the nearer she draws to the ultimate question:

What is her life’s true purpose – and is it a destination the Elsewhere Express can take her to?

 

The Elsewhere Express is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org

What made you want to read this one, what were your expectations going in, and what were your first impressions?

Beth: When I was putting together the Most Anticipated list for the Hive, and checking for upcoming releases to include, the cover of this one jumped out at me and I immediately added it to my wishlist – it looks so much like the sixth station from Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away! 

Nils: Over Christmas I had treated myself to a few books and one of them was Watermoon, also by Samantha Sotto Yambao. I had seen a lot of love for this one on Instagram and after visiting the author’s instagram page, I realised the author’s next novel, The Elsewhere Express, was being released in January. I was intrigued by the premise—a magical train—yes please! Then, like Beth, I fell in love with the cover.

My expectations for this novel were definitely high, I went in expecting whimsy, a studio Ghibli vibe and a truly enchanting experience. I was not disappointed. 

Beth: I was expecting a story similar to books like Before the Coffee gets Cold so I was a little worried that you weren’t going to like it Nils! I guess going into it not knowing the author, my expectations weren’t high, but I still thought it would be one I’d most likely enjoy at least.

Nils: Ah you needn’t have worried, love!

What did surprise me was the level of emotional connection I immediately felt for the two main characters Q and Raya. Yambao truly has a gift with words and that worked to draw me in and compel me to follow these characters as they have a life altering and mind bending experience. How did you find the opening Beth? 

Beth: Well before we even get to the opening of the story, I wanted to talk about the actual presentation of the book! I loved the theatre of it; the endpapers of our copies have illustrations that we’re invited to colour and allow our ‘mind[s to] wander and your heart to open.’ At first it seemed such a sweet whimsical thing to include, but looking at it again now it actually ties in to very important themes that recur throughout the story. The dust jacket has an ‘admits one’ ticket on it, the first part of the story is called ‘the first leg’ and the page is taken up to look like a ticket, complete with a puncture in the corner. We have a welcome aboard letter, an itinerary, and the chapter headings are presented as an FAQ… It all feels like an experience, rather than just reading a straightforward story. It feels like the introduction to an art installation. It felt like the first character I was meeting was the train, and that I was going on a journey rather than reading a book (which plenty will argue that is what happens when you read a book but it was emphasised)

Nils: Great point, Beth! The book’s design is absolutely beautiful. The cover on the dust jacket by Irene Martinez Costa is so magical and the illustration to colour-in depicts a character on this whimsical train. It was such a thoughtful touch to add something interactive for readers to relax with, to free them from their thoughts, and as Beth says, after reading this story it makes you see how perfectly that fits. 

Beth: When we do meet our two human characters, I was struck deeply by how sad Raya’s situation sounded; her parents conceived her so that they have a source of bone marrow for their son who has complex health issues. I just couldn’t wrap my head around bringing a child into the world as a sort of spare parts package for a sibling. Likewise when we meet Q, his situation is also complex and upsetting for entirely different reasons, but by this point I was reeling from how clever and beautiful Yambao’s writing is: ‘he was particularly wary of smiles’ to describe a person whose seemingly happy and content parent ended their own life. Suddenly I found my expectations for this book soaring!

What made Raya and Q such special characters to follow?

Nils: Q and Raya are so easy to sympathise with, their feelings are conveyed so beautifully that as a reader you fully appreciate their pain. Within the first few pages both of our main protagonists are presented with absolutely heartbreaking backstories. They have now both reached a point in their lives where their pain haunts them and their purpose in life is unclear, they are both lost souls. That is until they meet each other on the Elsewhere Express and have to find a way to navigate the train and find the darkness that’s causing it to unravel.

Beth: I’ve been really struggling to describe this book to others but you summarise it so well there Nils! 

Nils: As strange and unreal as Q and Raya find the train, so do we. It’s almost as though we experience this bizarreness together and try to figure things out with them. Both characters are artistic in different ways, Raya is a songwriter and Q a painter, and so these skills are paramount to their journey and their understanding of how things work on the train, which was so lovely to see unfold.

Beth: I think for me, the reason why I found them so intriguing to follow, was the way in which they’ve reacted to the various challenges and tragedies in their lives. Raya carries around her blame and guilt in a physical manifestation of a heavy bag weighed down with representations of her relationships and dreams. I was so angry for her. Conversely we have Q who is nothing but anger; he exudes a quiet persona, slow to trust, whilst inside is a turmoil. I found both these reactions to grief equally relatable and fascinating in their psychological complexity.

What about the train itself? What were your first impressions of the Elsewhere Express?

Nils: From the very first moment of boarding, the train is very dreamlike as we float from one image to the next in such a strange, almost trippy way. As I was reading I kept comparing this novel to the studio Ghibli film, The Boy and the Heron which also has a  disjointed, dreamlike feel. The further we explore the train, the more the disjointedness continues and I did find certain scenes became hard to picture and even follow. Though this by no means is a criticism because once you learn what the train is made of, it all starts to make sense and I kept thinking to myself of how impressive Yambao’s writing really was! Don’t you agree Beth? 

Beth: Her writing is incredible! I kept describing this book as a workout for the imagination! I’m not actually familiar with The Boy and the Heron, instead what it reminded me a lot of was the film Everything Everywhere All At Once? But the best way to describe it is dreamlike – those dreams you find yourself saying “I was in my grandmother’s house, or at least, I knew it was my grandmother’s house but it was actually a cave too”. It had that Alice in Wonderland quality of using objects as doors and painting exits into existence. We did laugh at how we struggled to follow our characters on their journey through the train but that’s not to say it wasn’t visually stunning. It’s lusciously descriptive, and Yambao’s writing holds so much meaning and moments that make you stop and consider things.

Nils: It would make an incredible adaptation in the right hands!

Beth: It absolutely would! I’d love to see it adapted as an anime, I think that watercolour-style would really suit a lot of the scenes.

What was your favourite car on the train?

Beth: I loved the description of the garden they walked through in the gallery car, but then I wouldn’t want to view an exhibit of my secrets! 

At what point was there a really quiet cottage in the woods Nils? I don’t remember what car that was but I remember thinking how idyllic it sounded.

Nils: I’m sure that was where the Archives were, which was my favourite car on the train. The Archives was a place of many glowing spheres that held more spheres inside and information the passengers might need too. Oh and protecting the Archives was a Jade dragon! Of course I was going to love a scene with a dragon!

Beth: I remember thinking, as soon as I read that part, omg Nils is going to be so excited!

And of course the beach where the songs washed up on shore! That’s the thing with this story, there are so many magical dream-scape like places that our characters flick through and travel between via unconventional means that, like a dream, it becomes challenging to grasp what happened and where and when. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a complaint, this is very much what the story is, I believe, purposefully emulating and doing so successfully! 

Nils: The beach with all the songs was so beautiful! I also really enjoyed the cobweb bridge that was held up by dragonflies and when you discover the meaning of the bridge, oh it was stunning. 

Beth: Ok I have to explain a little about the bridge, because it’s a great example of how the locations are presented: the ‘dining car’ is a restaurant in a cavern, which you get to by crossing this bridge across a ravine, which in turn you get to by entering a bird house after climbing a tree…

How did you find some of the other characters you meet on the train? Did you have a favourite? 

Nils: The two that are most significant to the story are Lily and Rasmus. Lily is the first person Raya meets when she is first aboard the train and right from then we learn that Lily is rather mysterious and is holding some secrets. We didn’t quite trust Lily, did we Beth? 

Beth: No we didn’t! But I don’t think we’re supposed to either. We’re trying to be careful in how we describe this story without giving too much away, but when we first meet Lily she explains how she chooses her appearance from the daydreams of train passengers and it almost sounded like shopping for your appearance.

Nils: Rasmus, on the other hand, seems to want to help Q and Raya, he wants them to learn about the train, explore all the different cars and even gives them a way to navigate through it. Yet even Rasmus appears to be hiding much. I really enjoyed the ambiguity of both characters and discussing theories with Beth, as always, was so much fun.

Beth: And we had so many theories! There’s plenty of mystery to this story! Although Lily and Rasmus were our two main side characters, I didn’t particularly like them very much as I didn’t trust them. Lily especially seemed quite mercurial, being friendly and smiley one moment but snapping at staff the next.

I did also like Dev the maintenance guy who took photos of everything to remind himself of things, he reminded me a lot of myself!  

Which theme resonated with you the most? 

Nils: One of the major themes that touched me was letting go of ‘excess baggage’, and this was one of the most beautiful explorations of this I’ve come across. Yambao really makes you think about all the unnecessary weight we carry through life, all the emotions that we bury or lose ourselves in, all the things that hold us back. She begs us to question, what would happen if we could let that go? Who would we be then? Yet what I truly loved was the showing of both sides, yes it would be healing to let go, but to completely forget? Well that might not be the best way to live. 

Beth: I was wondering where you were going with this because yes! I very much resonated with the flip side to that; Raya doesn’t want to let go of her baggage, and the more she was asked to, the more frustrated I felt for her. I think an important message throughout the story was the importance of not letting go of everything because then you lose yourself and that’s not the same as healing. There are two sides to the track; you could see the Elsewhere Express as somewhere to finally escape your sorrows to, to lay down your baggage and find an existence of comfort. Or it could be viewed as quite an unhealthy thing, as a place to run away to without facing up to the realities of the real world and learning to move on healthily and learn to grow. 

Favourite quotes?

Beth: There were so many I loved, so many I kept sending to Nils!

“The Elsewhere Express doesn’t pick up passengers at stations.” Lily repeated a script that lived on her tongue. “You boarded it at the end of all your dreams at a quarter past your heaviest sigh. The train caught you when you floated away.”

“His eyes gave him away. Those less acquainted with longing might have looked at them and seen nothing but the reflection of stardust, but Raya saw every hue of sadness no matter how well Q blended them in. His was a combination of pensiveness and melancholy, and the smallest drop of mourning.”

I think sometimes, we hide things so deep that we forgot they’re there

 Raya laughed. Then cried. Nothing cut deeper than loss, but finding what you lost hurt too. You couldn’t hold it without grieving for all the years your arms were empty.

Nils: There were so many quotes that just made me teary, so I’ll share a few here.

“Smiles were the easiest of deceptions and the prettiest of open wounds.”

“You say that the train’s doors don’t look like doors. I say that everything on the Elsewhere Express appears as it truly is. You don’t recognize them because you’re viewing them through an old, broken lens. The world you left is the illusion, not this train. Until you boarded, you lived with your eyes closed.”

“His sacrifice would go unnoticed just like all the invisible battles people waged every day. Getting out of bed. Smiling. Taking a breath. Invisible victories for invisible people with invisible pain, where the only prize up for grabs was the chance to do it all over again the next day.”

Overall thoughts

Nils: The Elsewhere Express is like a breath of fresh air wrapped in beautiful lyrical prose and magical metaphors. Every line by Yambao holds depth and meaning to craft a story of two lost souls trying to find their way through the darkness. The novel somehow manages to have a seamless balance between being cosy and whimsical, studio Ghibli-ish, but also poignant and incredibly sad. A simply superb novel to experience.

Beth: The Elsewhere Express is a stunning story, poignant and lyrical, whimsical and moving but with sharp edges of darkness to catch yourself on. Yambao’s writing is cleverly efficient, everything she writes has a double meaning, is representative of something. When Nils and I began to feel ourselves floundering because we couldn’t see where the story was going, it clicked with me that wandering thoughts, which the Elsewhere Express is made from, are not concise and do not have a specific direction. Everything about this story is calculated and deliberate but presented in such a narratively natural way. A truly magical exploration of grief presented in a gloriously imaginative way, a celebration of human emotion.

The Elsewhere Express is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org