“I have never understood how people
can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it
said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a
selfishness to conquer all.”
Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train
debuted at number one on the New York Times fiction list in early 2015 and stayed there for thirteen weeks. By August, it had sold three million copies in
the United States alone. Considering its domination in the UK market and
its publication in thirty-four countries, three million is just
the tip of the iceberg. A film starring
Emily Blount will hit the big screen
on October 7, 2016. Here is a brief introduction to the plot courtesy of bookrags.com:
“The
Girl on the Train” is a mystery and suspense novel by Paula Hawkins. It follows
the lives of three women – Rachel, Anna, and Megan – and the events surrounding
Megan’s murder, ultimately bringing the lives of the three women together. Each
day, Rachel takes the train to work in London, heading past the town of Witney.
There, she can see her old house, where her ex-husband, Tom, and his new wife,
Anna, live, and she can also see the home of another married couple a few
houses down. Rachel becomes endeared by this couple, whom Rachel nicknames Jess
and Jason. They appear to have the perfect life, and Rachel is both jealous of,
and happy for them.
One day, she discovers that Jess is having an affair, and
this enrages her. Rachel has no idea how someone could cheat on someone as
seemingly perfect as Jason. When Jess – who turns out to be Megan Hipwell –
goes missing, Rachel is sure that the man she saw cheating with Megan is the
culprit. She thus involves herself in the investigation, going to great lengths
to try to get to the bottom of things.
One of the things that has endeared
critics is that The Girl On The Train uses an ‘unreliable narrator’ (ala Gone Girl) in such a way that readers are never quite certain if the first-person account they
are reading is accurate. While critical review has been largely good,
reader reviews are often more along the lines of “Meh. It’s been done before by better writers and with more compelling characters.” I tend to agree.
However, since the purpose of this blog is to focus more on worldviews than on the literary merit of the books being reviewed, I will focus on two of the narrators who stood out to me as thought-provoking characters.