What is the difference between friendship & love? Or between neutrality & commitment? Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in `neutral` Switzerl&, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav`s father has mysteriously died, & his adored mother Emilie is strangely cold & indifferent to him. Gustav`s childhood is spent in lonely isolation, his only toy a tin train with painted passengers staring blankly from the carriage windows. As time goes on, an intense friendship with a boy of his own age, Anton Zwiebel, begins to define Gustav`s life. Jewish & mercurial, a talented pianist tortured by nerves when he has to play in public, Anton fails to understand how deeply & irrevocably his life & Gustav`s are entwined. Fierce, astringent, profoundly tender, Rose Tremain`s beautifully orchestrated novel asks the question, what does it do to a person, or to a country, to pursue an eternal quest for neutrality, & self-mastery, while all life`s hopes & passions continually press upon the borders & beat upon the gate.