The Train to Paris, the début novel of twenty-one-year-old New Zealand author Sebastian Hampson, centres on the ensuing relationship of Lawrence and the enigmatic Élodie Lavelle, which oscillates between unconventional friendship and transitory romance. Narrator Lawrence is wide-eyed and at times naïve, and the mercurial Élodie a vehicle for his loss of innocence. Part coming-of-age story, The Train to Paris is not devoid of literary platitudes (‘I was no longer the boy who could never muster the courage to follow his desires. I was the man who slept with beautiful women ...’), but Hampson – who, like Lawrence, has both lived in Europe and studied art history – is not unaware of Lawrence’s ingenuousness, and Élodie frequently mocks his nature while taking him on as a kind of project (‘We can fix you yet’).

In its whimsical sentiment and frequent resort to emotional descriptions, The Train to Paris might be dismissed by some as ‘chick lit’: an unfair term arguably designed to marginalise female authors who write books of a similar tone (and often conveniently ignoring the likes of Nicholas Sparks et al.). For others, The Train to Paris will, like its precursors, provide a study in escapism and a journey into the mind of the kind of author whose voice we don’t often hear.