Hanging around the station

‘Platform Seven’ – Louise Doughty

Platform Seven at 4am: Peterborough Railway Station is deserted. The man crossing the covered walkway on this freezing November morning is confident he’s alone. 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.

What the man doesn’t realize is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided. She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge.

Two deaths on Platform Seven. Two fatalities in eighteen months – surely they’re connected?

No one is more desperate to understand what connects them than Lisa Evans herself. After all, she was the first of the two to die.

This book did not deliver in how I expected. I was drawn to the spooky, atmospheric cover but the story itself was quite slow. It took me a while to get into the story and, when the main plot about Lisa really started to develop, I thought the progression was too obvious and subsequently frustrating.

I thought the premise was quite clever with Lisa’s ghost haunting Platform Seven. However, this book is not a traditional ghost story and the way that Lisa moves around the station is linked to those who processed her death. Furthermore, the writer references other characters which I thought added an intensity to the story and Lisa’s after-death experience. It was only until nearly the end that I really appreciated these other references.

Readers are taken back in time, learning about the events leading up to Lisa’s death. When she first meets Matthew, alarm bells rang immediately and I never fully trusted him. I had suspicions about how the plot would develop and when these were proven correct, I felt disappointed that the narrative never surprised me. It definitely lessened the impact of the story. Yet, on the other hand, Lisa’s past was more interesting to read about than the present: in comparison, the time spent around the platform felt timeless and stagnant. Perhaps this is the writer reflecting on the eternity of unrest that Lisa now seems to be experiencing.

This book is about a quest for truth and justice but, to be honest, I found the ending frustrating and not providing enough closure. I was disappointed by how the intensity of the narrative tailed off at the end as we follow Lisa around, interacting once more with characters still living. I did not get the sense of any justice and thought this was what the novel was sorely missing. It made me less keen on the book once I had finished it.

Quite creepy at the start, there are moments when I flew through the story; other times, my eyes flew through the words but they didn’t get absorbed. The pace of the story is not always consistent and I found moments in the novel quite boring. It is a shame the intensity of Lisa’s living life was not transposed to her time at the station, as I think this would have created an even more dramatic plot.