I Made You Up Inside My Head by Marta Pérez-Carbonell: A thoughtful novel about storytelling and truth

Some novels build their tension through action. Others build it through conversation. I Made You Up Inside My Head by Marta Pérez-Carbonell belongs firmly in the latter category, using a single overnight train journey to explore storytelling, memory, and the ethical boundaries between lived experience and fiction. While readers looking for a plot-heavy novel may find it slow, those interested in questions about narrative itself will discover plenty to think about.

At first glance, almost nothing happens. A translator named Alicia boards an overnight train from London to Edinburgh and shares a compartment with Terry, a professor whose latest novel has become the center of controversy, and Bo, Terry’s graduate student. During the long journey, the three exchange stories from their lives over food and drinks, gradually revealing old betrayals, painful memories, and uncomfortable truths.

Although Terry initially dominates the conversation, Alicia ultimately serves as the novel’s anchor. Through her narration, readers experience not only Terry’s stories but also her own reflections on what is said—and what is deliberately left unsaid.

One of the novel’s most interesting structural choices is Terry’s account of his bestselling novel. Rather than simply describing the controversy surrounding it, Pérez-Carbonell includes excerpts from Terry’s fictionalized version of events alongside his explanations of how closely the novel mirrors the real experiences of someone he knew. The differences between fiction and reality become almost as important as their similarities.

Terry, meanwhile, expects Alicia to reciprocate by telling him one of her own stories. She recounts being stranded on an island after her boyfriend abandoned her there, creating a tale that is compelling enough on its own. Yet readers gradually discover that Alicia has intentionally omitted some of the most significant details from the version she shares with her fellow passengers.

Given Terry’s willingness to transform other people’s suffering into fiction, her restraint feels understandable. Some stories simply are not his to tell.

Ironically, Alicia eventually entrusts those omitted details to the reader instead. That raises one of the novel’s most intriguing questions: who exactly is Alicia speaking to? If she withholds the full truth from Terry but reveals it to us, what kind of audience are we meant to be? Pérez-Carbonell leaves that question deliberately unresolved, adding another fascinating layer to a novel already preoccupied with the relationship between storyteller, subject, and audience.

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Readers expecting a traditional narrative arc should adjust their expectations. This is an intensely character-driven novel in which the central activity consists of people sitting in a train compartment talking about events that happened long before the story began. There is little conventional plot to propel the narrative forward. That doesn’t mean nothing changes.

Bo’s perspective gradually shifts as he listens to Terry admit just how much of Hans’s very real trauma found its way into the controversial novel. As Terry reveals more than Bo ever knew before, the student begins questioning both his mentor and the ethical foundations of the work he has admired.

After the train journey ends, Alicia cannot entirely leave the conversations behind. She and Bo remain in contact, eventually deciding they want to discover what truly became of Hans. This late development gives the novel a modest sense of forward movement while reinforcing its central concern with separating reality from the stories people construct around it.

The novel’s title proves especially fitting. Again and again, Pérez-Carbonell illustrates how every person invents narratives about themselves and about everyone they encounter. Alicia slowly realizes that many of the assumptions she has made about others are incomplete or entirely mistaken. The stories we create inside our own heads help us make sense of the world, but they can also distort reality in ways that profoundly affect other people’s lives.

That exploration of narrative ethics is easily the novel’s greatest strength. Rather than offering easy answers about whether writers have the right to fictionalize real suffering, Pérez-Carbonell presents multiple perspectives and allows readers to wrestle with the uncomfortable questions themselves.

I Made You Up Inside My Head won’t appeal to readers seeking suspense, action, or a tightly plotted story. It is a quiet, literary novel built almost entirely on conversation and introspection. Those willing to settle into its measured pace, however, will find a thoughtful meditation on storytelling, truth, memory, and the stories we invent—not only as writers, but simply as human beings.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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