The Girl On The Train
By Paula Hawkins
As the girl rides the daily commuter train to London, she stares
out her window at rows of houses lining the tracks. She grabs little glimpses into other people’s
lives. The girl is Rachel. Sometimes she takes what she sees at face
value, and sometimes she makes up her own fantasies and stories about what she
sees. But then, on a day that seems so much like
every other day, she suddenly glimpses something shocking out the window. Now everything has changed. Whether it’s Rachel’s curiosity or her
heroics, something compels her to get off that train and climb aboard a very
dangerous ride. Rachel is carrying her
own grim baggage, wrestling with her own personal problems as the book proceeds
with her involvement in a dark, mystery along the train tracks.
The author has written this book with Rachel as the primary
narrator, but interspersed are chapters written with different narrating
characters. As events transpire you’ll
read from these different perspectives, and you’re subject to the different
character’s motivations, personalities, manipulations and weaknesses. Some of these characters drove me wild with
frustration, others touched my heart, and others intrigued me. With this powerfully descriptive writing,
they each elicited a strong response in me.
It’s up to the reader to decide who is really what they seem, and who is
not, and whether you’re seeing the events described accurately? As a reader, who can you trust?
Paula Hawkins has written a slow-building suspense mystery. It’s like a train that starts with a jolt,
slowly builds up speed, and then in the end is propelled forward to its
ultimate destination. In this case, the
rider/reader will find the novel’s final ending an unannounced surprise. The author said in an interview, “I know
people like to read about serial killers and spies, but most of us will never
encounter these things. Sadly, most of
the threats we encounter are at home.”
This mystery features themes of domestic violence and alcohol and drug
abuse. It asks the slippery question of
whether people can ever truly know their spouses or themselves. The author describes what makes a
psychological mystery more complex than the average thriller, “the atmosphere
of menace that infects the everyday.”
Thereby hangs a tale . . . .
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