Book Review - Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

 Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955  (first published 1935, first published in Penguin 1942)

For me, Christopher Isherwood has become defined in my mind with the movie Cabaret, and by his work translating Indian mystical texts such as Patanjali's yoga aphorisms. I was aware that Goodbye Berlin is considered a modern classic, but had never actually read any of his work - now that I have, I won't be stopping at one. Published in 1935, when Isherwood was only 31, Mr. Norris Changes Trains seems the work of a much more mature writer. With his sure command of language and tone, Isherwood weaves a mysterious story around the upheavals in Germany that led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

In Arthur Norris, Isherwood has created a great literary character - shifty, untrustworthy, and yet loyal and in some ways lovable. With his peccadilloes and perversions, the reader does not know how to take him - the narrator William Bradshaw wants to trust him, and does so, right up until the end of the book. Norris is evasive, and that evasiveness is woven into the text, with the reader - like Bradshaw - left groping through the story for answers, and anchors. The sense of drifting fits well with the times in which the book is set, where from one day to the next the political situation could change, and where people were not necessarily what they seemed.

Mr. Norris himself is not a man who is easy to decipher. Some call him a con-man, some a spy: what is certain is that he is a man that lives by his wits. Bradshaw finds him in turns, odd, exasperating, intriguing, and devious. With his vanities (make-up, a wig) and nervousness, Norris seems ill-suited to the role of communist sympathizer, or, as he turns out to be, dealer in secrets.

Isherwood's strength in this novel is his characterization: Norris himself, Bayer the leader of the communists, Otto, the Baron, and Frau Schroeder are all wonderfully drawn, and even the minor characters sparkle in the melange Isherwood has created.

Apparently Mr. Norris Changes Trains was planned originally to be part of a longer work, and (for me anyway) this is revealed by the ending, which finds Norris being followed around the world by his secretary/nemesis Schmidt - who, it seems, blackmails Norris into blackmailing others. After all the intrigue built up by Isherwood, the ending is in some ways a bit of a damp squib.

I suppose it is the sign of a good book that the reader is left wanting more: this, then must be a good book, for I find myself unfulfilled, wanting more, wanting to know what happens to Norris and where his story takes him.

I will now go and hunt up Goodbye to Berlin, and continue my journey with Isherwood.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell