Off the Rails: Memoirs of a Train Addict

by Lisa St. Aubin de Terán

A childhood journey through Russia on the Occident Express began the author's lifetime addiction to trains, an addiction which forms the basis of this part-autobiography, part-travelogue. Journeys through Argentina, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the USA are all related in these memoirs.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Lisa St. Aubin de Terán was born Lisa Rynveld in South London. She attended the James Allen's Girls' School. She married a Venezuelan landowner, Jaime Terán in 1971, at the age of 17, and became a farmer of sugar cane, avocados, pears, and sheep from 1972-1978.

Her second husband was the Scottish poet and novelist George MacBeth. After the marriage failed, she married painter Robbie Duff Scott and moved to Umbria, Italy.

In 1982, St. Aubin de Terán published her first novel, Keepers of the House. This novel was the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award. Her second novel, The Slow Train to Milan, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She received the Eric Gregory for Poetry in 1983. Her work includes novels, memoirs, poetry, and short-story collections.

St. Aubin de Terán has three children, including a daughter by her first husband, Iseult Teran, who is also a novelist.

She currently lives in Amsterdam with her partner Mees Van Deth, where she runs a film company and has set up the Terán Foundation in Mozambique.

Reviews

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very different read for me, the memoirs of the author, author, poet, eccentric and most of all traveller.
We hear of her childhood in London, her wanderlust and unusual family and lifestyle.
A wanderer since a young age Lisa embarks literally across the world but mostly by train as her first choice for mode of conveyance.
Her lifestyle is unique and peripatetic even when a mother, she has flights of fancy and falls in love quite frequently and her affairs are as whimsical and romantic as her journeying.
Encountering danger, one off experiences, beautiful countries this is a must for the armchair traveller who enjoys yarns from far flung places and hedonistic living.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

As suggested by the full title, the book's a memoir with each chapter being an essay related in some way to an overall train theme. I read her more fleshed-out memoir Memory Maps first, so this one seemed sketchy to me. Unfortunately, this one re-enforced my previous impression of how self-consciously precocious she's always been. I give it a relatively high rating because she's a good writer, but I've decided that I'm really not interested in her life story, and how she's presented it.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating, despite being quite a ramble.

[Janette Dewar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have enjoyed other books of Lisa St Aubin etc... She has a great way with words and a formidable talent. However I think she was quite of the rails when she wrote this book. I think her imagination in this book is reaching wilder shores she has yet to travel to. I can't believe she has done half of what she says she has done. Plastering, making stoves being a nurse to those on the hacienda - what is there she hasn't done? Buying lots of ruined castles with George Macbeth etc etc., and in such a short space of time. However, she is interesting to read perhaps because of her imagination.

[Tamsin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, wonderful book because it inspires longing: longing for chance encounters and old-world glamour; for romance; going places in inconvenient dresses with cumbersome luggage; for friendships with amiable station staff; for train journeys, and for a new golden epoch of trains somewhere out there on the horizon.

LISA ST. AUBIN DE TERAN YOU HAVE MY HEART AND YOUR BIZARRE LIFE AND BRILLIANT WRITING MAKE ME A BIT SAD TO BE ALIVE NOW AND NOT BEFORE MOBILES WERE INVENTED BUT NEVERTHELESS VERY HAPPY TO BE ALIVE

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A complete indulgence by the author, for her own benefit or perhaps her nearest and dearest. I can’t imagine anyone else gaining anything at all from reading this. Perhaps I lack the right sort of culture required to enjoy her meandering love affairs and aimless and artless wanderlust. The title was misleading, to say the very least.

[Christopher Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I began by liking this story tremendously; Aubin's school years, reading and working hard though reluctantly, struck a chord, and her account of visiting the East when the East really was that is marvellous. But then she got rich... and the text becomes almost arrogant at times. Pity.

[Maud]

Na ongeveer een derde van het boek, kon het verhaal me niet genoeg boeien om verder te lezen.

[Concha C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written and interesting first half; then it becomes too self indulgent

[Mookie · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a previous reviewer mentioned, this book is very sketchy indeed. It's not fleshed out in the slightest, and though I suppose this would be difficult as it is a non-fiction, I felt like there was really no purpose in reading this story in the slightest. I bought it for a review on the back that claimed "First-class escapism", and while I enjoyed the possibilities to essentially "escape", I really began to dislike the author. She'll spend one chapter entirely devoted to her mother and father, and then devote half a sentence to declare she had a child "I gave birth to la nina Iseult", and then spend the rest of the ensuing paragraph to talk about someone else entirely. I'm a skimmer by habit, and I had reached the end of the book when Isuelt reappeared, and I had to go way way back to figure out who the heck she was.

This was, however, a well written story, and somehow succeeded in sucking me in all the way to the end. As the previous reviewer mentioned, I'm just not interested in reading about her life.

[Jennifer Sowle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book caught me off-guard since I knew nothing about the author, but love travel books and travel by train in particular. It is part-memoir, part-reveries about train travel and the seemingly hundreds of places that Lisa has visited. She jumps around, from England to Venezuela to Italy to Scotland, throwing in Russia and Argentina and several other countries, but writes with passion and paranoia and profound insight into the psychology of people; she also knows her botany, rambling off garden plant names casually, which always impresses me. Reading this book made me visit Wikipedia to get a fuller understanding of her life, her many loves and homes, in a more comprehendible chronology. But someone who cherishes (and lugs around) favorite old suitcases, and who wears Edwardian dresses when she travels by train, is someone I would like to read more about. I highly recommend this book and her other memoirs.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyed the first third of the book - then lost interest. Looking back it might have been when she writes of her mother dying. Before that it touched my interest and afterwards my interest drifted off. May be me and not the book..... So less than 3 stars to be fair.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intersesting book, liked the characters that she meets on the trains, it has a vintage feel, the style of fashion and a lost time came across throughout, many chapters made me laugh and smile.

[Elisa Halvegård]

Love it!

[Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly entertaining

[Diane in Australia · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 Star = Yuck. I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading it.

[Kristianne]

Given me by one of the great readers in my life, I read this book on a recent train trip to Portland and when through wild shifts of being charmed and irritated by the narrator, which made it feel appropriately like traveling with a friend.
A chronicle of Lisa St. Aubin de Teran's rambling travels from Britain to South America to Italy and all sorts of places in between, the book was the perfect companion for the rhythmic clacking rattle of the Cascade line route from Seattle to Portland.

SpectatorSpots.com

“I have woven a network of fantasy around the very concept of the train, so wide that the actuality of the journey can rarely outweigh the overall sense of glamour and daring which rail-travel has in my head. Myths begin naturally. . .”
-Lisa st Aubin de Teran