The Girl on the Train on the brain
For those of you who haven't read any of my posts before, I like cheesy titles.
Anyway, I just finished reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. There's only one word for this book. Wow. It caught me by surprise how much it sucked me in. It was like a soap opera, but like a really good soap opera. It was filled with intrigue, affairs, violence, suspicion, and well, everything.
The book is about a woman named Rachel Watson. She is an alcoholic trying to pull herself together after her husband has an affair, marries the mistress, and has a child with her. Oh and decides to move into their house with all their stuff two days after Rachel leaves. Seriously messed up. But Rachel finds solace in riding the train into the city during the weekdays. Everyday the train stops right outside a house down the road from where she used to live with her now ex-husband. Rachel believes this couple is the epitome of happiness and stability. She names the couple Jess and Jason, though she knows nothing about them besides what she has seen when she goes by their house on the train. That gives you a little hint right there that Rachel is not altogether with it, nor does she have a completely firm grasp on reality. Being drunk nearly all the time certainly doesn't help.
It isn't until her perfect fantasy collapses in front of her that things really start going down hill. One day on the train, Rachel sees "Jess" kissing someone who is most definitely not her husband. She feels betrayed by her delusion and is thrown another curve ball when "Jess," whose real name is Megan, turns up missing the next morning.
Rachel, conveniently enough, was drunk the night before and remembers going near Megan's house (which is close to her ex's house). She wakes up the next morning bruised, cut up, and with a gash on her head with no memory of what happened. When she hears about Megan, she knows that she saw something that would solve the mystery of Megan's disappearance, but she can't remember what it is.
She stubbornly inserts herself into the investigation claiming she knew Megan and even goes as far to tell Megan's husband about the other man she saw. In an effort to help, she becomes entangled in a story that goes beyond Megan and what happened to her.
The story begins from Rachel's perspective then jumps back a year in time to Megan's perspective, a year before her disappearance. Rachel's ex's new wife, Anna, has chapters of her own, and it soon becomes apparent that these three women are connected somehow. The time jumps are clear as each chapter starts with a date. The narration is written like a well-thought-out diary entry. The emotions from each scene seem to spill over into the time they are presumably written, shortly after.
It took me a bit to get into this story because Rachel is not exactly a sympathetic or trustworthy character. I was annoyed by her need to continually place herself in the middle of everything. However, once the other narrators start to come into play, and Rachel fights to get sober my sympathy rose especially for Rachel who is set next to some not-so-sympathetic women. Each women has a distinct personality and story that contributes to the story as a whole. As their story lines weave closer and closer together, it becomes harder and harder to put the book down.
I have heard mixed reviews about this book. The general public loves it. It is a New York Times Bestseller and is being made into a major motion picture due out early October. People that are more into literary fiction don't quite understand the mass appeal of this book and say it is too much like Gone Girl. I can't speak to that because I haven't read Gone Girl. All I know is that I really liked this book, and once I got past a certain point in the story it was incredibly hard to stop the train from taking me with it.
I recommend reading this book before you see the movie. We all know that the media don't crossover well, and I think the book deserves some praise of its own. It's well written, fast paced, full of drama, and well put together. It's definitely not high-brow literature and appeals to a general leisurely-reading audience. I think it is quite like a soap opera in the way that some people may look down on it, but darn it if you can't help binge-watching it.
So get on the train, take a ride, watch and see. Things aren't always as they seem on the other side of the window.
