3.5 stars
Rachel, trying to drown the sorrows of her recent divorce in alcohol and denial travels to London on the train every morning and back to the suburb where she shares a flat with an old friend in the evenings. As she passes the area where she used to live, she observes a seemingly golden couple and makes up a fantasy narrative about their life to comfort herself in her loneliness. She’s named them Jess and Jason and believes them to have a perfect relationship, in contrast to her miserable life, post failed-marriage.
One day, she sees “Jess” kissing a man who is most certainly not “Jason” in the garden, and this causes Rachel to have a minor breakdown. Waking up after a particularly epic drinking binge, she has a cut on her head, several bruises and absolutely no memory of what happened, but she believes it may have involved her old street, and possibly seeking out her ex-husband. She also discovers from the news that Megan Hipwell, as “Jess” is really called, has disappeared.
Rachel knows (as everyone else) that the husband is always one of the main suspects in disappearance cases. She believes very strongly that “Jason”, in reality Scott Hipwell, couldn’t have hurt his wife. She’s determined to notify the police about the strange man that she saw Megan with from the train. Due to her habitual drunkenness, Rachel’s not really treated as a reliable witness by the police, further hampered by the harassment complaints made about her by her ex-husband’s new girlfriend. Because she knows the police aren’t taking her seriously, Rachel feels compelled to contact Scott as well, pretending to be a friend of Megan’s. She needs him to know about the man Megan was seeing.
As she keeps returning to the area where she used to live, where Megan disappeared from, Rachel struggles to remember what happened to her on the night she has completely blacked out. She knows she was in the area the same night that Megan left her home – could she have seen or heard something that could help the case?
Full review on my blog.
I’m sorry, Malin. I can see how this book would be upsetting for you.
My book club read this when it first came out, and we’re going to go see the movie together, which should be fun. Aside from some history with alcoholics, none of us has any personal issues that they could relate to. That stuff definitely affects the way people read certain books.
I don’t think the comparison to Gone Girl is fair, either. Comparisons like that are practically useless because they never take into account context or specifics.
Yes, I should probably have skipped this one. Alcoholism is pretty much the family disease on my father’s side (my Dad – stopped drinking 28 years ago, my uncle – didn’t and it killed him two years ago, my father’s two aunts, probably others further back) and then there’s my persistent inability to concieve. That’s what I get for wanting to go into a book unspoiled.
oh noooooo
I hope you read something happy next.