The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
Nov. 9th, 2016 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Every day the same. Until today.
Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.
And then she sees something shocking, and in one moment everything changes.
Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.
Now they’ll see: she’s much more than just the girl on the train …
Rachel is a divorced alcoholic who’s lost her job but still takes her normal commuter train into London because she can’t bring herself to tell her landlady and college friend, Cathy, about her situation but also because the train stops at the same signal every day along the back of a number of houses, including one where she used to live with her ex-husband, Tom. She uses the stop to try and catch a glimpse of Tom and his ex-mistress/new wife, Anna, and their baby daughter but also likes to conjure stories about another couple who live further down the road, who she’s called Jess and Jason. She likes how happy they seem and that gives her own life some meaning.
But one day she sees Jess do something that destroys her illusions and shortly after Jess – real name Megan – goes missing in a highly publicised case. Rachel thinks she can help find what happened – can prove to Tom that she’s moving on with her life. But the more she insinuates herself into the case, the more confused she gets because she has vague memories of the day Megan disappeared, almost as if she was there …
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
The Verdict:
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.
And then she sees something shocking, and in one moment everything changes.
Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.
Now they’ll see: she’s much more than just the girl on the train …
Rachel is a divorced alcoholic who’s lost her job but still takes her normal commuter train into London because she can’t bring herself to tell her landlady and college friend, Cathy, about her situation but also because the train stops at the same signal every day along the back of a number of houses, including one where she used to live with her ex-husband, Tom. She uses the stop to try and catch a glimpse of Tom and his ex-mistress/new wife, Anna, and their baby daughter but also likes to conjure stories about another couple who live further down the road, who she’s called Jess and Jason. She likes how happy they seem and that gives her own life some meaning.
But one day she sees Jess do something that destroys her illusions and shortly after Jess – real name Megan – goes missing in a highly publicised case. Rachel thinks she can help find what happened – can prove to Tom that she’s moving on with her life. But the more she insinuates herself into the case, the more confused she gets because she has vague memories of the day Megan disappeared, almost as if she was there …
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
The Verdict:
Paula Hawkins’s bestselling psychological thriller is a tautly written tale told by three equally unreliable narrators (Rachel, Megan and Anna) that was slightly infuriating at times – mainly because of Rachel’s self-destructive behaviour - but the tension builds to a satisfying conclusion. I had mixed emotions about Rachel because she’s not an easy character to empathise with – her alcoholism makes her self-destructive and she obsessively stalks her ex-husband – and at times I felt that it was a little too much and there were a couple of instances where I didn’t buy into her actions. Hawkins does well, however, at showing how Rachel sees this as a chance to get some of herself back and I particularly enjoyed her Rachel’s point of view is supplemented by Megan and Anna, each of whom is unreliable in their own way – Megan because of the lies she tells and Anna because of her contempt for Rachel. Equally good is the slow drip of information as to what’s really happened, which I thought was handled and actually makes the book stand up to a second reading. In conclusion, I could see what all the hype was about with this book and I would definitely read Hawkins’s other work.
