Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you—and even more about yourself.
Author
Clare Pooley graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge and spent twenty years in the heady world of advertising. Clare’s memoir - The Sober Diaries - has helped thousands of people around the world to quit drinking. The Authenticity Project, Clare’s first novel, was a New York Times bestseller, a BBC Radio 2 book club pick, and winner of the RNA debut novel award. Clare’s second novel - called The People on Platform 5 in the UK, and Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting in the USA - is coming in May/June 2022
