The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins
Riverhead Books/Penguin, 2015
323pp, hardcover
A Review by Gene Stewart
A lonely woman on her daily train commute notices a pile of clothing beside the track. She is Rachel, doing her best to cope in an indifferent world now that she’s on her own again. She looks forward each morning and evening to catching glimpses of the backs of suburban houses, of the doll-like people living in them. She makes up stories about their lives, especially for one house, and one couple. Onto it, and them, she projects her dream of domestic bliss and perfect harmony.
When she sees something shocking seem to occur at this perfect oasis of suburban bliss, as the train idles at a regular stop, Rachel, frantic and certain, if a little tipsy, reports it to the police, so beginning a complex waltz of suspicion, betrayal, revelation, and danger.
Elements of Hitchcock, as the dust-jacket blurbs breathlessly proclaim, inform this story. Touches of Patricia Highsmith grace it, too, and not just via the oblique, ironic reference to Strangers On a Train. There is a taint of noir, a stab of the transgressive, and many flavors from gritty real life. Most of all there is narrative, the voices of two women conflicting into a sordid dance macabre. Who is to be believed, the scorned, often drunk ex wife or the bitter new prettier younger interloper? Is it the woman whose only fault is to love, or the calculating, manipulative sociopath smiling as she holds a baby?
Which is which?
Bafflement and fascination in equal measures carry the reader along on a sometimes claustrophobic, sometimes breathless plunge into domestic confusion and suburban melodrama, all presented in a cold, reportorial prose honed by the writer’s work as a journalist. It is a book of private depth and public appearances. We delve into character even as we are perhaps misled by events, or the claims put upon them.
Keeping the reader off-balance while pulling the reader eagerly along is no small feat and Hawkins delivers it with aplomb. Evocative, tactile, sodden, blurry, sharply focused, sly, oblique, ironic, direct, blunt, shockingly forceful, the book wrings amazing changes on the characters and events without once slipping, without once taking a false step into self-parody. On one level not alluded to in the text directly, this is a damning indictment of a certain class and section of society, especially for commuters, suburbanites, and other fellow travelers. On another, it is a personal story of coping, courage, and confession, revealing the kinds of gnarled scars relationships, real and imagined, can deliver.
The Girl On the Train is a chiaroscuro of bright surfaces and dark interiors. Appearances and inner lives do not necessarily match, and reading this excellent book reminds us what face value can be worth. Nothing is what it seems, unless it is. Pretending you can tell them apart is the risk we all take every time we meet someone, even those we live with in our own homes.
Subversive would apply as a description of this novel. Compassionate would work, too. Insightful, revealing, and deadly. Memory and envy clash, covetousness and disdain fight, and real, flawed people struggle and are put at great risk.
This book is enthralling in ways we may not wish directly to acknowledge. Suspense and insight balanced on a rail, waiting for the next train. Take it and ride along spellbound.
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