You don’t talk to the people on the platform, or on the train. You sit in silence, lost in your headphones or your phone or even a book. But what happens when the man sitting opposite you suddenly begins choking to death? Amid his sudden gasps and heaves, the ice of convention is broken open; a woman in a bright suit bellows for a nurse, and suddenly a group of strangers become acquaintances….and then, part of one another’s lives. The People on Platform 5 is another “human connection” story, though with a different premise — and for me, a more labored execution. Whereas Authenticity Project had an ensemble cast with two stronger-than-average characters, Platform 5 is more dominated by one character so much that the other characters comment on it. She’s the hub; they’re the spokes, to quote them. An alternate title of this book calls it Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting, in fact. Iona is an aging dancer turned ‘agony aunt’, or ‘newspaper therapist’: she has a big personality, favors expressive clothing, and has no compunction against yelling or bossing people around. She’s especially fond of tone- and word-policing people, and insists on bringing her yappy little dog everywhere she goes — on the train, to the office, in restaurants and even the theater. Although her social aggression is part of what brings the group together, and sustains it — she’s the one who calls for a doctor to save the choker, the one who suggests that _______ talk to _______, etc — one reason I dragged my feet through this novel is that I found her borderline obnoxious and unlikable. (I have to add the latter because I’ve known several obnoxious people whom I still liked.) The most interesting character to me was Piers, who begins as an unlikable future trader: we later learn that he’s been fired from his job, is riding the commuter train to hide the fact from his wife, and is desperately day-trading to keep income coming in. He undergoes a lot of character growth and later facilitates another character’s growth. It was still a sweet story, but I think reading this back to back with Authenticity Project was a mistake: it did let me see a lot of commonalities in Poole’s writing, though, like frequent Harry Potter allusions. This is evidently set in the same universe as Authenticity, since the main character refers to one of her paintings as being a Julian Jessup: Julian was one of the two leads in AP. Without spoiling anything, Iona and Julian have another critical thing in common. All told, this is a short but sweet novel about people with different struggles — aging, bankruptcy, self-doubt, etc — finding support in one another.