I’m not quite sure The Girl on the Train deserves all the hype it’s being given, but it’s a fast-paced psychological thriller/mystery, and I think it succeeds handily in being exactly what the author wanted it to be. I didn’t NEED to read it, and you don’t either, but I’m glad that I did.
As is always the case with these sorts of books, the less said about the book the better, but I do want to take a second to talk about some things:
1. Hawkins employs a series of unreliable narrators to tell her tale (in the first person present, which notably didn’t make me fly into a rage here, so props for that). This has the effect of obscuring things not only from the reader, but from the other characters as well. In the case of the titular girl on the train, Rachel, we’re seeing the story through the lens of a depressive alcoholic who is barely holding it together. It’s a challenge to sort through her wobbly, emotionally self-destructive perspective to see what’s really going on. I liked the way she used Rachel’s flaws to enhance the mystery at the same time as Rachel’s character. The other two POV characters are Megan, a blonde young woman whom Rachel observes every day from her commuter train, and Anna, the mistress who Rachel’s husband left her for.
2. Your sense of these women as people is constantly shifting as the book goes on. They are not always likable, but they are always interesting, and ultimately, human. This complicates the mystery but also gives the book a little more depth. If you’re looking for depravity and shocking behavior, you’re not really going to find it here. Everything that happens here is couched in a layer of sympathy from the author–these aren’t monsters or psychopaths, they’re people who’ve sometimes done and said terrible things.
3. Of course I didn’t figure out the mystery, but I’ve heard other people have. I’ve stated on numerous occasions that I’m not the best at figuring out the answers in mysteries, so keep that in mind when I tell you the ending came as a surprise to me. It also fit in with everything that had been happening in the book so far and made retroactive sense. I’m not sure if you guess the ending if that will hamper your enjoyment of the book–it might, and it might not. There might still be some pleasure in it for you to see how the whole thing is constructed. How Hawkins put it all together is pretty neat.
If you like thrillers and mysteries, you should definitely check this book out, just don’t put any of your own outside expectations onto it and you’ll be fine. Despite what you may have heard, this isn’t “the new Gone Girl.” It’s its own thing. Read accordingly.
I don’t quite get the Gone Girl comparison myself, so I’m glad you mention that this book stands alone just fine. Yes, there are unlikeable female characters–but they’ve been around forever. Have reviewers (not us!) ever read Vanity Fair?
I love Vanity Fair! And the answer to your question is no, they haven’t. Or any other book with similar lady characters written more than ten years ago. I think people tend to have short cultural memories and think that books like Gone Girl just pop up out nowhere, fully formed.
I’m tickled by this review because it seems like we had similar experiences reading the book and even wrote about the same themes, but ultimately came away with different levels of excitement about it — personal taste is a beautiful thing!
Also agree wrt the GG comparisons. I called it a “spiritual successor” in my review, which possibly sounds like a stronger link than I meant it to be. It’s like you both said up there.. they tick the same boxes in how they want to explore the world (darkly, unreliably) but they’re not a package deal.
Yeah, I think I really connected to Rachel from the get go. Alcholism runs in my family, and I really felt for her. I’m also a sucker for books that can get me to change my opinion on a character. If you can successfully do that for me, you’ve pretty much got me.
For me, this book was so much more positive than Gone Girl. I came away from that book feeling rotten about humanity and myself. I came away from this one feeling the author had tried her best to portray the bad and good of humanity. It was so much for relatable (and pleasant) for me.