The Girl on the Train

Author: Paula Hawkins
Publisher: Penguin Audio
ISBN: 1611763738
Language: English
Formats: Kindle,Hardcover,Paperback,Audible, Unabridged,Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged,
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Women's Fiction, FREE Shipping,

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

“The Girl on the Train has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since Gone Girl. . . . [It] is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership.”—The New York Times

“Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages.”—The Boston Globe

“Gone Girl fans will devour this psychological thriller.”—People 

A debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives.

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

“The Girl on the Train has more fun with unreliable narration than any chiller since Gone Girl. . . . [It] is liable to draw a large, bedazzled readership.”—The New York Times

“Like its train, the story blasts through the stagnation of these lives in suburban London and the reader cannot help but turn pages.”—The Boston Globe

“Gone Girl fans will devour this psychological thriller.”—People 

A debut psychological thriller that will forever change the way you look at other people's lives.

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.

Rachel is a woman who considers herself worthless. She feels that women are only valued for two things: their looks and their role as a mother. She is barren and rather plain looking. Unbeknownst to her landlady she has lost her job but continues to ride the commuter train twice a day. Unfortunately she must pass the home of her ex-husband Tom and his new wife Anna. They've recently had a child which is something Rachel was unable to produce when she was married to him. He's moved his new family into the home that he and Rachel once shared. Tom posted a picture of himself and his newborn on Facebook with the caption that he's never been happier.

Rachel, in her despondency, has taken to drinking to a point where she has blackouts and forgets that she drunk calls her husband many times a night, even shows up at his home. Because of a signal malfunction she often finds her rail car stopped on the tracks next to her former home. She starts to notice another couple who live a few doors down. She refers to them as the golden couple and manufactures a narrative about their lives as she observes them each day. They gradually become important to her.

When Megan (of the Golden Couple) disappears Rachel finds herself an integral character in the police investigation. She was seen stalking the neighborhood the night of the disappearance. She has wounds on her body that can't be explained. Megan and Anna look enough alike that the police feel there may be mistaken identity involved.

The book is told in three voices: Rachel, Megan and Anna. The fact that Rachel has a history of drunken blackouts and has a hard time separating fact from fiction makes her overtly suspect, even to herself.

This was a premise to which I couldn't say no. From the window of her train, troubled, alcoholic commuter Rachel Watson watches the world --including a couple who are frequently out on their terrace at the very point her train stops every day. She names them Jason and Jess and decides their lives are the perfect happy-ever-after that hers has never been. But then Jess, whose name is really Megan, goes missing; and Rachel's memory of the night Megan disappeared is a yawning black hole. Did she see something? Can she help these strangers who continually draw her into their lives? I expected a taut psychological exploration driven by the mystery, but Hitchcock this isn't. None of the characterizations ring true, and the plot is created by withholding information the characters would naturally be thinking about (other than Rachel, who can't think about the plot due to alcohol-induced blackouts).

I didn't find a single one of these characters to be genuine in their humanity. They're not merely unlikable; their un-likability is forced and exaggerated. Rachel's convenient blackouts happen so frequently as to become tedious. Even sober, she constantly makes atrocious decisions, all the while acknowledging to herself variations on "I'm stupid" and "I shouldn't be doing this." She has no common sense, no boundaries, no willpower, no emotional fortitude whatsoever. The other first-person narrators are no more believable: Anna, who is married to Rachel's ex-husband Tom and seems to be a mash-up of sociopath and nurturer (what?); and Megan, about whom I really can't say anything without spoiling the mystery.

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