Train Dreams

Not really sure how to rate this because I enjoyed the movie so much more and wasn't expecting the book to be doing something entirely different. The movie, in my opinion, centered on the weight of trauma, grief, and loss. How the consequences of a brief moment in time can reverberate throughout your life. But in the end, there is some type of grace to be found amongst loss and failure. In the novella, there are remnants of that. The same poor decision that cursed the main character in the movie is present in the book. The consequences are also just as devastating. But ultimately, the story of Robert Grainier is a portrait of a person that history tends to forget. And I think that idea that the life of someone seemingly unremarkable can also contain the full weight of the human experience is a larger part of what readers are supposed to takeaway.