The Girl on the Train in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 05, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: unreliable-narrator, psych-psych-psych, lotsa-buzz, suspense-thriller, 100-best-of-21st-c, fiction, broken, r2015-in-2015

Wow. Just wow. On the one hand, I don't want to give this too good of a review, because I don't want to make others' expectations too high. That might ruin it. This book need to sneak inside and wow you when you don't expect it. On the other hand, this was exquisite.

It's a bit like a roller coaster: steady yet fun at the start, the tension builds slowly but surely thought the first half - you're intrigued, not quite certain if this is going to be amazing or just fun, and it's okay if you need to Wow. Just wow. On the one hand, I don't want to give this too good of a review, because I don't want to make others' expectations too high. That might ruin it. This book need to sneak inside and wow you when you don't expect it. On the other hand, this was exquisite.

It's a bit like a roller coaster: steady yet fun at the start, the tension builds slowly but surely thought the first half - you're intrigued, not quite certain if this is going to be amazing or just fun, and it's okay if you need to set the book down now and then. The tension crests at the midway point, and there is no setting this book down, it is a breathless ride to the end.

The story is told from three points of view: Rachel, Anna, and Megan. If I have one quibble with this book, it's that the three voices are not sufficiently distinct - there were a few times I would lose sight of who was speaking, and I'd get "you" and "I" confused, and have to go back and check. That said, I definitely identified best with Rachel. She is the one I think of as the main character, the one who has the most depth, the one I understood the best. Rachel is fucked up, but I could easily see myself slipping into the mess she's in.

Through the first half, I found myself comparing this to other recent thrillers: Before I Go To Sleep and Gone Girl. This story is the one that might be told if the main character of Before I Go to Sleep was investigating the disappearance in Gone Girl, but both of those books were a bit too over the top to feel real (a mistake this book does not make).

Hawkins' writing is exquisite in its spareness. The character's musings appeal to my Inner Bitch.

Beautiful sunshine, cloudless skies, no one to play with, nothing to do. Living like this, the way I'm living at the moment, is harder in the summer when there is so much daylight, so little cover of darkness, when everyone is out and about, being flagrantly, aggressively happy. It's exhausting, and it makes you feel bad if you're not joining in.

*

She must be very secure in herself, I suppose, in them, for it not to bother her, to walk where another woman has walked before. She obviously doesn't think of me as a threat. I think about Ted Hughes, moving Assia Wevill into the home he'd shared with Plath, of her wearing Sylvias' clothes, brushing her hair with the same brush. I want to ring Anna up and remind her that Assia ended up with her head in the oven, just like Sylvia did.

*

Cathy is waiting for me when I get home. She's standing in the kitchen, aggressively drinking a glass of water.

That simple image, of "aggressively" drinking a glass of water ... it communicates so much in so few words: Cathy, normally ridiculously nice and accommodating, is angry, justifiably angry, she's stewing, she's simmering with all the things she wants to say, but she is also passive aggressive in her anger, she withholds the words and lets it out in small gestures. I would never think to describe it that way, but it is perfect.

Things I liked:
1. The characters are complex, with both good and bad qualities (except for the villain, in the end).
2. I did not guess who the villain was.
3. I LOVE the Unreliable Narrator trope, it makes the puzzle that much more fun to solve. ...more

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Dec 22, 2015 Tony rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: setting-england-london, novels, adapted-for-film, unreliable-narrator

Wow, this is a terrible book... It reads like someone deliberately set out to try and do a Rear Window/Gone Girl mashup with an overlay of convenient amnesia. In a nutshell, the story is about an alcoholic who commutes into London every day and imagines the lives of a couple she sees from the window of the train -- who also happens to live on the street the alcoholic woman lived on with her ex-husband. When the woman disappears, the alcoholic thinks she might have remembered seeing something. Fr ...more

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Apr 11, 2015 Grace rated it really liked it

First time in a long time that I finished a book in a few days.

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Mar 08, 2015 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: ___europe, female-author, thriller

This book was a good thriller. I read most of it in one day. As I find is the case with most thrillers, I enjoyed the build up of this book much more than the climax and the resolution.

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