In her latest novel, Emma Donoghue boards a train destined for disaster

Set in 1895, Emma Donoghue's latest novel The Paris Express takes readers all aboard a suspenseful train journey from the Normandy coast to Paris.

Inspired by a real-life photo of a train hanging off the side of Montparnasse station, she crafted a story that unravels over the course of one fateful day, featuring the fascinating stories of the passengers, from a young boy traveling solo to a pregnant woman on the run, the devoted railway workers and a young anarchist on a mission.

Drawing on real people from history and thorough research, The Paris Express is rooted in the political and social themes of the late 19th century. 

"A lot of this stuff from history is just more interesting than I could invent," said Donoghue, known for her historical fiction writing, on Bookends with Mattea Roach.

"Some writers may have imaginations that need no starting substance in the Petri dish, but I don't."

Donoghue is an Irish Canadian writer whose books include the novels Landing, Room, Frog Music, The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars, Learned by Heart and the children's book The Lotterys Plus One. Room was an international bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Brie Larson. 

She joined Roach to discuss the complexities of the time and the process of writing a novel steeped in historical accuracy.

Mattea Roach: How would you describe the role of the railway in France at the end of the 19th century? Why did you want to set a novel at this time and dive into trains?

Emma Donoghue:  What attracted me was the disaster. I don't want to give any details, but basically there was a famous train disaster and famous photographs of that disaster. I knew that I had to write about this train disaster because the image of that photograph is just so surreal and memorable and has been a popular image on album covers and dorm rooms. 

But I also was delighted to seize the chance to write about a disaster of any kind because I love the fact that, when a day goes wrong, when a plane goes upside down at Toronto airport, it's affecting all these different people. So it's a wonderful test of character. Would we be the ones helpfully holding the hand of the person beside us or would we be clambering over their heads trying to get our laptops?

I wanted a disaster novel and trains were so key to the time. If you see a map of the train lines of Europe, you can see how they made everything possible. They transported talented people like one of the characters on my train, Alice, she's working for Gaumont. She's basically going to invent films the next year. She's there asking her boss for permission to use the camera they have on the weekends. He doesn't see the future, but she does.

• Emma Donoghue's historical thriller explores a French train wreck & the lives within it — read an excerpt now

There's another man on my train, Bienvenue, who's a boy from Brittany and he wants to invent a subway for Paris. Everybody's saying it's a crazy idea. So Paris was this extraordinary centre of the world in that people with any kind of get up and go to them — rebels, bohemians, anarchists, queers — everybody wanted to get to Paris. Being able to get to the big city easily was one thing the trains offered. So there's this extraordinary circulatory system whizzing people to Europe and whizzing products like camembert — the camembert was able to get to its market because trains could move it fast enough that it hadn't rotted. 

MR: I understand in the process of crafting this novel you spent some time living in Paris. What was it that appealed to you about Paris as a writer that made you want to go first of all, spend a bunch of your own time there, and then really dive in with a historian's lens?

ED: It was the other way around. I was going there because my partner is a professor of French and we've spent a few years in France. In the past, we've mostly gone to the lovely warm South, but this time, the kids were older. We thought Paris would be more interesting. So I was going to spend a year there anyway. 

The only apartment I could find happened to be in the area of Montparnasse on the left bank. So I Googled Montparnasse and there I found the photograph of this crash. I just felt an iron fist gripping my heart saying, "You have to write a book about this." It's the only time I've ever planned to write a book in a place before I go there. 

I just felt an iron fist gripping my heart saying, "You have to write a book about this."- Emma Donoghue

So it wasn't so much being inspired by the place and a novel gradually occurring to me. It was a feeling of, "Okay, this is how I'm going to be spending my year. I'm going to be living in 2022-23, but also in 1895. Every pastry I eat is going to be relevant to the story."

MR: How would you describe the role of gender in your writing?

ED: It's the door that has opened the way onto a long corridor out of which other doors have opened. I was a very middle class, comfortable girl who did well in school. My awareness of gender and of basically the oppression of women in my teens, especially in the Irish context where there was no reproductive healthcare and so on. That helped make me aware of all the ways in which we are not the norm.

Then, when I realized I was queer as well at 14, again, I was like, wow, talk about society's unwritten rules. I'm the other. I'm the one who I thought everybody would hate and despise. And I thought the villagers would come with their fiery torches. That means that I have gone on to write a lot about people of other races, about disability, about people put on show as freaks, about enslavement.

So I think it has just sort of opened the doors of my mind. Gender was where it all began and I've retained a very vivid interest in the ways that gender rules structure the world and can limit everybody.

I was trying to capture the ways in which trains have often included flirting or picking up strangers.- Emma Donoghue

One thing I tried to do in The Paris Express was rather than having the characters who are privileged and nasty and then the brave rebels — I really tried to mix it up. So for instance, there's a sort of unexpected, man, man sexual encounter in the book. I deliberately gave that to a character who's very entitled. He's not a good guy. And yet at that particular moment, I give him this joyful, unexpected encounter because I was trying to capture the ways in which trains have often included flirting or picking up strangers. They bring people together and keep them cooped up together.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Sarah Cooper.