The London Underground

The London Underground embodies Anna’s life in motion: a place where she is always traveling between jobs, classes, and home, never fully still.

In Chapter 2, Anna picks up a glossy magazine about Cannes during a Tube ride, which pulls her into childhood memories of her mother tracing roads in National Geographic. Anna recalls, “Whenever there was a road on the page, her fingers had to follow it. ‘When we retire, I’m going to travel,’ she said” (13). The Tube thus becomes a site where the ordinary grind of commuting intersects with memory and longing, collapsing present and past.

The Underground is also where Anna feels the weight of London’s inequalities. She rides the trains exhausted from work, eating ploughman’s sandwiches and counting coins, while passengers around her glide in wealth. Yet in these moments, she also finds space for imagination. The trains’ rocking...