Book Review
The Girl On The Train
Paula Hawkin’s psychological thriller is a train ride you’ll never forget.
Thriller plots are not all the same. Some fall flat. Some surprise. And some pull the ground from beneath you.
The Girl on the Train was British author Paula Hawkins’ debut novel that came out five years ago. Having debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Sellers, it retained that position for the next thirteen weeks. The book was later made into a movie by the same name starring Emily Blunt (and that would be the sad subject for another blog post).
But that’s not the reason I am writing this review, long after the success of The Girl on the Train and the subsequent Into the Water debacle. I’ve read thrillers before, loads of them. And like most readers, I like to anticipate. I am also mostly aware of what to expect. After years of consuming Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Higgins Clark, Agatha Christie, and a slew of other brilliant minds, your brain gets accustomed to plots — you start assuming, deducing, and concluding halfway through the plot. Some fall flat. Some surprise. A few pull the ground from beneath you.
The Girl on the Train is the story of three women: Rachel, Megan and Anna. The plot uses multiple perspectives from each of these women to tell its story. But when the narrators themselves are unreliable, who will you trust?
Rachel, Paula Hawkins’ protagonist, is an unusual central character. Alcoholic, unemployed, unable to move on from ex-husband, a history of violence — Rachel is not the everyday commuter on the train to London. She travels to hide the fact that she’s unemployed, and in effect, unable to pay her share of the rent.
Yet, you’ll be amazed by her keen observations and taut narration of everyday events that keep her engaged during the short journey.
“The train crawls along; it judders past warehouses and water towers, bridges and sheds, past modest Victorian houses, their backs turned squarely to the track.
My head leaning against the carriage window, I watch these houses roll past me like a tracking shot in a film. I see them as others do not; even their owners probably don’t see them from this perspective. Twice a day, I am offered a view into other lives, just for a moment. There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
Rachel’s drinking dates back to the time when her marriage had started its fateful downward journey. Led into depression by her inability to conceive a baby, Rachel's occasional mood swings quickly morph into full-time drunkenness. Not long afterward, her relationship with her ex-husband Tom ends. In the present time, Tom has moved on and now has a family complete with a child; only, Rachel wants them to get back together.
It is on these train journeys back and forth that she catches her first glimpse of Jess and Jason; a young couple that she watches everyday from her comfortably hidden position in the train. She doesn’t know their name — but she knows when they go up on their roof, when they drink coffee and when they talk. She imagines what they could be talking about. What they could be drinking. Perhaps coffee. Perhaps milk. She wonders what their names could be. Perhaps Jess and Jason.
Inevitably, the sight of a couple, safe and happy in their home wrenches Rachel’s heart as she inadvertently travels back in time to when she and Tom looked just like that — a happy young couple who lived in a beautiful house, not far from where Jess and Jason lived now. Except their happiness didn’t last.
In her endless cycles of depression and revival, we get to see and feel the intensity of her loss, hysteria, and chaotic relationship with herself. Rachel might be a complex character, but as the story winds through the perspectives of three women whose lives are intertwined beyond repair, you see her uncoil and shed layer after layer of skin until you’re left only with her truth.
The pace of the story picks up when, in one of her drunken train journeys, Rachel sees something that shatters her image of Jess and Jason. Suddenly chastened by a sense of responsibility, she approaches the cops. However, the police hold no value for the unreliable statement of a woman who looks like a disaster and reeks of alcohol. Turned away, she retreats to her tired and drunken self, borrowing money from her mother and sending job applications to people who would never hire her.
Days later, in one of those nights when she’s in her drunken stupor, Rachel chances upon something vital to the mystery unfolding right before her. Only, she has absolutely no recollection of it afterward.
However, this much is clear: what she saw has far-reaching consequences, and maybe she wasn’t ready for it to come crashing down on her.
All you can ask yourself from the melancholic beginning to the hair-raising finish is this,
“What did she see?”
Rachel’s story is not just a mystery, thriller, or a psychological deep-dive. The Girl on the Train is one strong tale of survival and grit that will have you rooting for and against the confusing central character in a dynamic landscape that keeps shifting perspectives.
I’ve observed that The Girl on the Train has been repeatedly compared to Gone Girl. There are some notable differences, however, that would be good to know. The Girl on the Train is a more traditional mystery that moves faster and (personally), is very rewarding at the end. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to sink their teeth into a thoroughly engaging story, but more importantly, likes to appreciate how there can be many dimensions to many characters.
(You’ll probably) Read it in one sitting!
