Published by Riverhead ISBN 9781594633669
Hardcover, $26.95, 326 pages
Reprinted from The Citizen:
One of the most buzzed about books has published this past
week. Paula Hawkins “The Girl On A Train” has been called this year’s “Gone
Girl”. (It even has the word ‘girl” in the title.)
Like Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl”, “The Girl On A Train”
features an unreliable narrator, a twenty-eight-year old woman named Rachel. Rachel
rides the train everyday from home in Ashbury to work in London.
We get a little foreshadowing when Rachel looks outside the
window on the train and sees a pile of clothing lying on the side of the train
tracks. Her overactive imagination wonders what could have possibly befallen
the person who belongs to those clothes.
Every day, Rachel passes by a neighborhood where she
frequently sees a young, attractive couple on their terrace. She has named them
Jess and Jason. She imagines Jess is involved in the arts, and Jason works for
an NGO, helping poor people. Each day, the story she creates becomes more
elaborate.
Slowly we get more information about Rachel. She likes to
drink on the train, not only on the way home, but also on the way to work.
Rachel has a serious drinking problem. She lost her job because of her drinking, but hasn’t told
anyone yet, so she takes the train everyday with nowhere to go.
We also find that Rachel’s husband had an affair, divorced
her and moved his new wife into their home. Rachel was forced to rent a room in
the home of a college acquaintance. She lives in a room basically, has no job,
no husband and drinks too much. Life is not good for Rachel.
One day, she sees Jess on her terrace, kissing a man who is
not Jason. Rachel is upset about this, for in the world she created for them
they are blissfully in love. A few days later on the news she sees a photo of
Jess, whose real name is Megan, and discovers that Megan has gone missing.
Rachel goes to the police to tell them what she saw. The
police take her information, but have questions about her. Rachel decides that
she must tell Jason, whose real name is Scott, what she saw.
Her only hesitation in seeing Scott is that her old home,
the one that now houses her ex-husband, his mistress-now-wife, and their young
daughter, is just four doors away from Scott and Megan.
When Rachel gets drunk, she calls Tom, her ex, and cries.
His new wife, Anna, has had enough of Rachel’s harassment, but Tom still seems
to care for Rachel. He says he is sorry for what has happened, and wants Rachel
to be happy and move on with her life.
Rachel goes to Scott and tells him that she was friends with
Megan, and she saw Megan kiss another man the day before she disappeared. Scott
is devastated, and while he wonders why he never heard Megan mention Rachel, he
begins to question if he really knew his wife.
The story is told from the perspective of Rachel, Anna and
Megan. Megan’s dead body is found near her home, and the race is on to find her
killer. Of course, the husband is a prime suspect, as is the man Rachel saw
kissing Megan on the terrace.
Rachel insinuates herself into the police investigation. She
meets with the boyfriend, and becomes closer to Scott. Anna doesn’t like Rachel
hanging around her and Tom’s neighborhood, and wants Tom to cut all ties with
Rachel.
On the night that Megan went missing, Rachel was in the
neighborhood, very drunk, stumbling, and Tom found her bloody and dazed under
an underpass. She had a bump on her head, and remembers nothing after leaving
the train stop. Did she see who killed Megan?
Careful readers may pick up a few of the clues Hawkins has
placed to figure out who killed Megan, and there is a “holy cow” moment halfway
through the story that explains a character’s motivations.
“The Girl On The Train” is a fast-moving, heart-pounding
thriller that keeps the reader on the edge of her seat, particularly the
tension-filled last chapter. Fans of “Gone Girl” will like it, but it also
reminded me of another terrific book with an unreliable narrator, “The Other
Typist”. You can’t trust anyone’s
memory or motive.
This book satisfies my Book Set In A Different Country for Reading Challenge 2015
