The Girl on the Train

Our latest group read was one I wasn’t looking forward to reading at all, and I must say my bookish spidey sense is spot on. The Girl on the Train just wasn’t my kind of book at all, loathsome characters and a confusing timeline. I had no sympathy for any of them and they included a few of my pet hates. There is more to being a woman than being a wife and mother. Megan is stuck at home bored out of her mind, I cannot fathom how someone cannot find anything to do with their time. If I was a kept woman, I’m pretty sure I could fill the time.

Rachel is driven to alcoholism by the fact she cannot have children and Anna seems to not care about anything other than her child. And the men! God, I can’t say much without spoilers, but this wasn’t a very pleasant reflection on society. Even the one character, Rachel’s housemate, who was “nice” had her niceness portrayed as something negative.

I did like the concept though, the repetition of the daily commute, the glimpses into someone else’s life, if only for a few seconds. I just don’t like this current trend to not only have an anti-hero but to also make everyone else unlikable.

Every day Rachel takes the train into London and at a particular stop she likes to look out to the street and observe the row of back gardens. One house in particular is of particular interest to Rachel; she likes to imagine the lives of the couple living there, in which she has named ‘Jess and Jason’. They seem so happy, compared to her on life, she views them as a perfect couple. Until one day the minute stop allowed her to see something shocking, which leads Rachel to become a part of their lives. Rachel becomes more than The Girl on the Train.

I have to admit that I was a little hesitant going into this book; I thought it was going to try and replicate what Gone Girl did. While in the same vain with the multiple perspectives between Rachel and ‘Jess’, whose real name is Megan, The Girl on the Train stands on its own. While this book is already being compared to Gone Girl, I would just like to say that The Girl on the Train shares more similarities to The Silent Wife than anything else.

This novel plays a lot with the ideas of relationships and perspective; what may seem like a perfect couple on the surface can be a deceiving. Without going too much into the plot, I want to look at the way ‘Jess and Jason’ are perceived by Rachel. Obviously Rachel is an unreliable narrator, she only sees the couple’s house for a minute or two a day and not always the couple. To pass the time on her commute, she makes up this whole idea of what is happening in their lives.

The Girl on the Train does go a little deeper with exploring ideas of relationship, with a focus on abuse. Emotional abuse becomes a key component in the book and Paula Hawkins dives into the previous marriage of Rachel and even adding a couple of chapters from her ex-husband’s new wife. This thriller mainly happens on a psychological level and the reader gets an insight into the effects of emotional abuse.

There is a lot to be said about The Girl on the Train and I think this would make an excellent pick for a book club. Unfortunately reviewing a book like this makes it difficult, I am too worried about giving out spoilers and this restricts me from diving deeper into the themes within the novel. This debut by Paula Hawkins is not without its flaws; I think there was a missed opportunity to dive deeper into the major themes, however I did not enjoy my time with this novel.

This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2014/12/24/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins/