Night Train to Nykobing

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

Night Train to Nykobing is the first-person story of a woman who loses
herself to an addictive love. A university professor is forced to leave
her lover in Demark and to await the unraveling of events in his life
back in her homes in Saskatoon and British Columbia. Gunnars constantly
frustrates our involvement in the story’s deeply felt emotions by
introducing shifts in time and space and by peppering her novel with
literary allusions and quotations from different writers on the practice
of writing. In fact, Night Train to Nykobing is as much a statement on
the nature of narrative fiction as it is a novel. The author’s
technique of telling only so much of the story at one time forces the
reader to become aware of the way in which pieces of information are
revealed (and concealed). We are distanced emotionally but
intellectually engaged, and anxious to give this fascinating book a
return visit.