Paula Hawkins melancholy tell of what happens to the survivor’s of murder victims as they go on living in the aftermath of loss, with their own pathologies and pathos, shines as a hypnotic and nimble new comer in a genre burdened down with rigid rehashing of the procedural tropes in many mystery thrillers.
The story starts with Rachel piecing her life back together after being fired from her job. She is living with her flat mate Cathy, pretending to still be employed by riding the train into town each day, and generally snooping in the lives of her neighbors, imagining their specifics and superimposing her wishes on couples in her local park.
She’s a lonely, self-loathing alcoholic, approaching the hill’s bend who may or may not have murdered a familiar woman in a blackout fit of rage. She keeps reaching into the missing spaces in her memories for those lost hours in hopes of discovering just what happened to the pretty blonde reported by the local press as missing.
Along the way Rachel makes more than her fair share of missteps like attracting police attention toward her as a potential suspect when she really meant to aid the investigation, to identifying the wrong man as the murderer, causing his life undue pain, and even becoming friends with the victim’s husband, which blows up in her face when he confronts her about her lies.
The characterizations are spot on. Thirty-somethings, self-involved and reflecting on their experiences to find meaning in their identities and daily lives. Enter Rachel the character with the story’s biggest narrative perspective, filled with angst and despairing after being fired for an alcohol fueled emotional breakdown at work. She looks for meaning in the lives of others and hopes to find someone to love her chubby body and crows feet ridden face.
Meagan, the hot blond that everyman wants and every woman wants to be, is in similar shape. Her beauty is better, but her loneliness and longing are equally as strong as Rachel’s. The beautiful thing about Hawkins writing is she portrays these ladies desperate situations with striking visceral-ness. Their thoughts, feelings and perspective lunge from the page and right into your mind as the pieces of a real experience, though virtually distributed through the medium of the novel. In short these ladies breathe and live on and off the page.
I would find myself feeling like, “Poor pretty Meagan—so sad.” not knowing that I’d feel less connection to her after I learned what she’d done to motivate her potential murderer.
The roles were reversed for Rachel the books protagonist. I thought her quite unappealing at first when I thought she was a depressed and aging alcoholic. But when I discovered that she had several psychological pathologies, I loved her the way I love traffic pile-ups across the median.
Memories and how they fade over time is the biggest thematic concept discussed in the pages of The Girl On The Train. From Rachel’s pure blackout, to Meagan’s more nuanced memories of darker days locked within the vault of her lonely feelings we get a cobbled together view of the past life events that motivate the characters’ current actions.
Rachel’s cognition issues come from her drunken blackouts that leave holes in her memories. Meagan and Scott, her husband are both driven by faulty memories, either romanticized through distance from the events that inspired them, or due to constant rehearsal that glosses over the truest features from the past, respectively.
Loss and how we as people deal with it plays huge in the themes category as well. Rachel as the barren mother turned alcoholic tries to fill the void in her life by helping Scott find his missing piece—just who murdered his wife. But she had in turn lost her dream of being a mother when it was discovered her womb was barren. Scott lost his wife Meagan to the hands of an illusive murderer. Meagan, before dying had lost her way in life due to the deaths of two key people from her past and her resulting disillusionment that sees her seeking to fill that void by cheating on her husband to prove to herself that she is desirable/lovable to men.
Rachel’s pathological lying and constant meddling are attributes I loath to see in people I know, but on a character as nuanced and just plain crazy as Rachel, they are the life and breath of this narrative, which plays in the—what-about-the-people-who-knew-the-victim, realm.
And that is the fresh air that Hawkins brings to the genre. Every detective mystery I’ve read or even watched in movie theaters shows the detective’s perspective, or the victims—you know through flash backs. This one discusses what happens to those waiting to hear that the police have captured the slayer of their wife, neighbor, or the girl the protagonist obsessed over as they road the train to town.
Rachel, as an OCD nightmare stalker/private investigator sizzles as an unexpected suspense novel star who is an unreliable narrator and gets as close as law enforcement would to solving the murder when using their tactics.
The author mingles a bit of the lead character’s own paranoia and pathological nosiness into her sincere attempts at exposing the murderer—thereby exonerating herself from the memory gap she has of the night in question. How emotive, cerebral and delicate this thriller truly is.
From wondering if Rachel is the blackout killer, to the red herring of Dr. Adbic as the wanted murder, and then back to wondering if Rachel has actually killed Meagan again, I totally bought the slight of hand that author, Hawkins does right before my very eyes.
A novelist as skilled at misdirection as she, would definitely make a great up-close street magician. And that’s what the first half of this novel plays out as. A card trick of a tome that kept me wondering who-done-it, while all road lead to the sketchy protagonist in the genre specific trope of the detective did it, but doesn’t remember—this time the detective is a blackout drunk with self esteem issues and a histrionics complex to boot.
Read this dazzling New York Times Best Seller and recommend it to all your friends.
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The Girl on the Train: A Novel
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Reviews with images
Slow train ride that launches into human reality and craziness as it goes faster and faster off the tracks............
Gruelingly boring to get into but all of a sudden it all made sense why this book has been on the best seller list for so long.The foibles of mankind both male and female. What a study in human craziness, cocktails and relationships......... Kept my attention to the very end which so often does not happen with decent books.I have recommended Girl on a Train to others just because I want to get their take on the whole thing.
