Patrick Welch

“Westchester Station” is a short and interesting story. Robert Winstead, finding himself trapped at O’Hare station due to weather, takes a cab to Westchester Station, hoping to find a way to Schnectady. Instead he finds himself in a station that exists intertimentionally. In his time there he meets figures from life and from mythology including aliens, a minotaur, an artist, a huckster and many more.

The novel progresses in vignettes, each scene dealing with the hero’s interactions with a particular person or place in the station. In each scene, more about the station is revealed. Problems are solved, obstacles are overcome. It reads quickly and has some humorous bits as well as more serious and thought-provoking ones.

The only problem with this book as such is that the whole story seems in the end to lack much of a point. The character growth that should usually be the center of a book like this isn’t really in the foreground, and doesn’t even really seem to take place. So in the end you look back on a series of interesting things that don’t seem to add up to much. Which is fine, but in comparison to works like “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman (to which it is somewhat similar in concept, if not in atmosphere), it seems to be lacking something. Not that it isn’t interesting and entertaining, just that the plot seems to meander and then stop.… (meer)