Perceptive Debut Novel Immediately Engrossing

Twenty-one-year-old Sebastian Hampson, an art history and literature student at Victoria University, writes with an assurance that belies his years, according to the Australian, and his debut novel The Train to Paris, inspired by Hampson’s travels in Europe, “is immediately engrossing.”

“In a video on the Australian Text Publishing website a somewhat hesitant Hampson, far more tentative than suggested by the confidence of his writing, says: ‘I wanted to write a story about what it means to be young in the wide world and the self-discovery that comes from being in situations that are beyond your control.'”

“[The Train to Paris is] a perceptive and thoughtful love story in the tradition of A Brief Encounter,” reviewer Sue Green writes.

“The final chapters are involving and moving, lingering in the mind.”

Original article by Sue Green, The Australian, March 8, 2014.