Saturday 22 August 2015

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

"It doesn’t make sense, and I could scream with the frus­tra­tion of it, the not know­ing, the use­less­ness of my own brain."

Everyone it seems is raving about The Girl on the Train, and settle in readers, I'm about to do the same. Told from the perspective of three very different women with a lot more in common than they realise, it is captivating in its doling out of suspense by the truck load.
Along with the crime mystery aspects it delivers an insightful portrayal of the unsavoury results of infidelity and divorce - sadness, loneliness, alcoholism, jealousy - all rear their ugly heads within.
Rachel is unable to cope with her divorce from Tom. Her inability to have children has led her down a dark path of copious drinking, black outs and the termination of her marriage. Tom meanwhile has moved on to Anna and now has a little baby, to Rachel's constant consternation. Having lost her job, Rachel pretends to go to work every day on the train and is fixated by a couple whose window she spies in passing. 

When the woman from the couple in the window disappears, Rachel will be drawn into the web of mystery. Her black outs make her an unreliable narrator and really add to the suspense. What happened that Saturday night? You will want to finish it and find out.


5 out of 5 train trips haven't been this intriguing since Hitchcock.

No comments:

Post a Comment