Inspiring Older Readers
The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins
(Spoiler alert! There may be information in this review that some people would consider gives away significant parts of the plot)
“Hang on a minute”, I thought as I started reading this recent and highly acclaimed psychological thriller by Paula Hawkins, “surely this is a rip off, or at least a homage to the Hitchcock film Rear Window?”
The tense plot of that classic film noir is based around the hero played by James Stewart witnessing what looks like a murder being carried out through the window of an apartment facing his own. He has got into the rather dubious habit of regularly observing his neighbours through the boredom of a long house bound convalescence. There are also echoes of ‘The 4.50 from Paddington' by Agatha Christie when an old lady is concerned by seeing a violent incident take place in the outside landscape as she travels as a passenger on a train. Nobody believes her apart from her friend, the redoubtable Miss Marple, who goes on to solve the mystery.
The first few pages of this compelling page turner introduce us to Rachel, the girl of the book title as she too regularly travels on the train. As in the Hitchcock film, she gains considerable pleasure from snooping on the domestic lives of a couple who live in a house backing onto the railway track, where the train regularly stops for a signal change. Following the plot of the Christie story, she one day witnesses something that bothers her and this drives her to investigate further. But then everything becomes extremely complicated and the story takes off in a very different direction.
It turns out that Rachel has a past connection to the street of houses she likes to observe. In fact, she has something of an obsession with it because she used to live a few doors down prior to the collapse of her once happy marriage and subsequent divorce. The house is now occupied by her ex husband Tom, his new wife Anna and their much adored baby daughter, Evie.
When reading, or watching 'who dunnits' I generally start by blaming the least likely characters first and gradually realising that I would not make a very successful detective. This time I had baby Evie in the frame but it won't surprise you to learn that she wasn't guilty of anything. The skill of this writer is that she manages to lure you along with different suppositions and then throw you right off course again. Nothing is ever certain so everyone is suspect. The move between the three narrative voices of Rachel, Anna and Megan, the female half of the couple who has been scrutinised for such a long time, helps with this. All are complicated women who are not what they seem and the men they are involved with also have back stories and so have possible motivations for doing something unpredictable. The narrative also moves back and forth in time over a period of two years so that the reader can get a sense of the different perspectives and the evolution of the plot.
We learn very early on that Rachel is an alcoholic, and has been for several years. She pitches from brief highs to increasingly frequent lows which seem to be escalating in terms of lack of control and memory loss. I believe that this is an accurate portrayal of addiction which shows us a very sad, paranoid and lonely individual with no real purpose to her life. Are we supposed to sympathise with her horrible humiliating situation -I'm not sure. Anna is the focus of her seething jealousy as she with her ex husband appear to have an idyllic marriage. Megan whose eventual mysterious disappearance is central to the plot also has links to Anna as she used to look after Evie.
The plot thickens, twists and turns and gathers pace in a masterful fashion and I didn't guess who the baddie was until just before the reveal. This was a very satisfying story that kept me reading into the small hours. However, I will think twice about living in a house overlooked by a railway track. If I have no choice then I will certainly invest in some opaque net curtains and avoid sitting on the patio for passengers on a train to gawp at. After all, who hasn't done this as a train dawdles through the suburbs?
Karen Argent
9th January 2016