It seems Paula Hawkins hit the jackpot with this book which is an international best seller and is currently on the top of the list of best sellers in America. Hawkins was raised in Harare, Zimbabwe and now living in England. While she has written other novels, this is her first big success. "The Girl on the Train" is being compared to "Gone Girl" and has been optioned for an upcoming movie.
I had high hopes for this book as I enjoy a well-written suspense novel. Hawkins is a decent writer and the plot is clever. The story is told with three interwoven story lines, each told by the main female characters: Rachel, Megan and Anna. All three women have secrets and fibs are told and a threatening atmosphere runs through to the end. The time frame slips back and forth also. It seems to me that a number of popular books today use time frames which move back and forth and stories related by multiple characters.
Most of the story centers on Rachel; she is the girl on the train. Rachel is a complicated mess. She is an alcoholic and her drinking is out of control. It is responsible for the loss of her husband, Tom, and her job. She continues to ride the train to London each day and carries on the pretense that she is still working. It is unclear what she actually does with her time in London. Each day on the ride, the train passes the back gardens of the homes in her old neighborhood, including the house she lived in with Tom and which he still lives in with his wife and baby. Rachel fortifies her self with drink, most often cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic. The trip home takes 4 cans. Along the way she often sees a glamorous and seemingly loving young couple on their patio, and Rachel invents a life for them. She calls them Jess and Jason. They live several doors down from where she lived.
Megan is the real name of the woman Rachel calls Jess. Megan is also a conflicted character which Rachel discovers as the plot thickens. Megan is married to Scott, and their life is far from ideal. Megan's disappearance is the catalyst of the story.
The third woman is Anna who is married to Rachel's ex-husband, Tom. Anna's character is a foil to Rachel's. She reacts to Rachel's stalking of her and Tom and their new baby. In her drunken state, Rachel seems unable to stay away from Tom and Anna.
Rachel suffers from serious blackouts. She is trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to her on the night Megan disappeared. On that night, Rachel arrived home scratched and bloody, and she knows something happened in an underpass after she got off the train. She knows there is a woman involved and a man, but does not know who they are. She also has a shadowy remembrance of a man with red hair who helped her up when she fell on the station stairs.
To find these answers you will have to read the book. I am not as enthusiastic about this book as other readers or critics have been. It has a similar format to "Gone Girl" in which the suspense builds and the ending might or might not surprise. I was not surprised. Like "Gone Girl," I did not find the characters in this book likable or empathetic. For my money Nicci French's books, "Blue Monday" and "Tuesday's Gone" are better thrillers.
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