The Girl on the Train: A Novel Kindle Edition

Paula Hawkins melancholy tell of what happens to the survivor’s of murder victims as they go on living in the aftermath of loss, with their own pathologies and pathos, shines as a hypnotic and nimble new comer in a genre burdened down with rigid rehashing of the procedural tropes in many mystery thrillers.The story starts with Rachel piecing her life back together after being fired from her job. She is living with her flat mate Cathy, pretending to still be employed by riding the train into town each day, and generally snooping in the lives of her neighbors, imagining their specifics and superimposing her wishes on couples in her local park.She’s a lonely, self-loathing alcoholic, approaching the hill’s bend who may or may not have murdered a familiar woman in a blackout fit of rage. She keeps reaching into the missing spaces in her memories for those lost hours in hopes of discovering just what happened to the pretty blonde reported by the local press as missing.Along the way Rachel makes more than her fair share of missteps like attracting police attention toward her as a potential suspect when she really meant to aid the investigation, to identifying the wrong man as the murderer, causing his life undue pain, and even becoming friends with the victim’s husband, which blows up in her face when he confronts her about her lies.The characterizations are spot on. Thirty-somethings, self-involved and reflecting on their experiences to find meaning in their identities and daily lives. Enter Rachel the character with the story’s biggest narrative perspective, filled with angst and despairing after being fired for an alcohol fueled emotional breakdown at work. She looks for meaning in the lives of others and hopes to find someone to love her chubby body and crows feet ridden face.Meagan, the hot blond that everyman wants and every woman wants to be, is in similar shape. Her beauty is better, but her loneliness and longing are equally as strong as Rachel’s. The beautiful thing about Hawkins writing is she portrays these ladies desperate situations with striking visceral-ness. Their thoughts, feelings and perspective lunge from the page and right into your mind as the pieces of a real experience, though virtually distributed through the medium of the novel. In short these ladies breathe and live on and off the page.I would find myself feeling like, “Poor pretty Meagan—so sad.” not knowing that I’d feel less connection to her after I learned what she’d done to motivate her potential murderer.The roles were reversed for Rachel the books protagonist. I thought her quite unappealing at first when I thought she was a depressed and aging alcoholic. But when I discovered that she had several psychological pathologies, I loved her the way I love traffic pile-ups across the median.Memories and how they fade over time is the biggest thematic concept discussed in the pages of The Girl On The Train. From Rachel’s pure blackout, to Meagan’s more nuanced memories of darker days locked within the vault of her lonely feelings we get a cobbled together view of the past life events that motivate the characters’ current actions.Rachel’s cognition issues come from her drunken blackouts that leave holes in her memories. Meagan and Scott, her husband are both driven by faulty memories, either romanticized through distance from the events that inspired them, or due to constant rehearsal that glosses over the truest features from the past, respectively.Loss and how we as people deal with it plays huge in the themes category as well. Rachel as the barren mother turned alcoholic tries to fill the void in her life by helping Scott find his missing piece—just who murdered his wife. But she had in turn lost her dream of being a mother when it was discovered her womb was barren. Scott lost his wife Meagan to the hands of an illusive murderer. Meagan, before dying had lost her way in life due to the deaths of two key people from her past and her resulting disillusionment that sees her seeking to fill that void by cheating on her husband to prove to herself that she is desirable/lovable to men.Rachel’s pathological lying and constant meddling are attributes I loath to see in people I know, but on a character as nuanced and just plain crazy as Rachel, they are the life and breath of this narrative, which plays in the—what-about-the-people-who-knew-the-victim, realm.And that is the fresh air that Hawkins brings to the genre. Every detective mystery I’ve read or even watched in movie theaters shows the detective’s perspective, or the victims—you know through flash backs. This one discusses what happens to those waiting to hear that the police have captured the slayer of their wife, neighbor, or the girl the protagonist obsessed over as they road the train to town.Rachel, as an OCD nightmare stalker/private investigator sizzles as an unexpected suspense novel star who is an unreliable narrator and gets as close as law enforcement would to solving the murder when using their tactics.The author mingles a bit of the lead character’s own paranoia and pathological nosiness into her sincere attempts at exposing the murderer—thereby exonerating herself from the memory gap she has of the night in question. How emotive, cerebral and delicate this thriller truly is.From wondering if Rachel is the blackout killer, to the red herring of Dr. Adbic as the wanted murder, and then back to wondering if Rachel has actually killed Meagan again, I totally bought the slight of hand that author, Hawkins does right before my very eyes.A novelist as skilled at misdirection as she, would definitely make a great up-close street magician. And that’s what the first half of this novel plays out as. A card trick of a tome that kept me wondering who-done-it, while all road lead to the sketchy protagonist in the genre specific trope of the detective did it, but doesn’t remember—this time the detective is a blackout drunk with self esteem issues and a histrionics complex to boot.Read this dazzling New York Times Best Seller and recommend it to all your friends.

I normally don't write reviews for books that have anything over a few. I mean, what can a single person add when there are so many? It's all been said probably. Finding it is a problem, but it's all been said.Either way, I feel compelled to say a few words about this book. It's a great first novel. That is, the story. The story is very creative and her telling of it, writing excluded, is engaging and makes you not wish to put it down until you're finished, which is fortunate because it's a short read. I read it yesterday, in fact. I'll add that I'm a slow reader and it took me from about 11:00 until about 2:00 a.m. with a few short interruptions. It was raining and I lazed about the house yesterday, but I digress. The point is that if you're a fast reader, you'll likely finish it much more quickly.I don't understand this trend of "I look up and see *insert something here*... I am watching television... I am making tea.. I am standing in the doorway looking out..." I can't stand overly active first person novels. No one ever talks that way. Ever. I first noticed the overuse of that voice with Hunger Games. It annoyed me so much, that I didn't get past the first outdoor announcement scene. I couldn't stand it any longer. I got through this one, however. Perhaps because I simply had to see what was so Hitchcockian about it. I'm an enormous Hitchcock fan and it's a sure bet that if I hear a few people call it Hitchcockian, I'm going to do my darndest read it.The second thing that bothers me is its predictability. I figured out, very early on, where this was going. On the other hand, to be completely fair, being a Hitchcock fan, I read a lot of mystery and suspense so I'm a bit more intuitive about it than say the average reader. Provided of course, that the author doesn't cheat. This one didn't so I applaud her for that. I hate cheats.My best example of cheats is Matlock, the TV show from the 1980s. I still liked it, but there was no way anyone could ever figure it out because only at the end did Andy Griffith say, "So when you killed her, you slammed your arm in the doorway and broke this watch, which we found at the repair shop on 49th street." Well why didn't he tell US about the watch and the repair shop on 49th street?! Had I known, I would have figured it out too... maybe.The point is that in this instance, Ms. Hawkins provides the bread crumbs, you just have to find the trail. That's always a good thing.Story wise, I have one word to sum that up: WOW. It's not just the story, but her understanding of depression, unhappiness, misery and everything else in our lives. If she hasn't experienced all of these feelings before, then she deserves some sort of national book award for totally fooling us all.Reading books in Kindle (yes, I have a point, just please bear with me now) has its benefits and drawbacks. There's nothing at all like smelling the new crisp paper pages of a brand new novel. You can see where you're at, where you're going. You can take it in public and read and it's proof that you're not reading some sort of smut and so on. However, Kindle has its benefits too. It's lightweight, you can have it on your phone in fact. You can take all your books with you anywhere and such. One thing too that Kindle does, at least in a couple of its apps (I don't think the phone) is see what other people highlighted in the book; that is, commonly highlighted. It's always fun to see what words touch a bunch of others.The selected sentences in this book were truly great quotes on what is a grueling battle, for some of us, to get through life. For people who have either experienced it, or for those of us who have had family that has, it's a relief to see that they're not alone. It's kind of a kindred spirit.As for the story itself, it's woven very well. Trying to explain the story to my mother and daughter, both blanched and said it was "overly complicated". That was interesting because when you're reading, it truly does not feel that way. It's easy to read, easy to follow and there is no confusion, but hearing myself explain it, it did sound complicated. That shows how clever Ms. Hawkins is with her writing. It's easy to understand.All in all, I highly recommend it, even with it's minor shortcomings. It's a great first novel and I sincerely hope that Ms. Hawkins won't feel overwhelmed and cursed by it. From here on out, any novel she publishes will be under much scrutiny and compared to this one. I would just like to shake her hand and whisper in her ear that it was the same for Agatha Christie and look how prolific she is today.Enjoy it everyone!

Le plaisir de lire.

Buena lectura para verano.

This is the first book I finished in less than 4 days. It is addictive and you just can't stop reading. I hesitated a bit to buy it, because I read that the amount of characters was confusing, and it is not true at all. Quite an easy and enjoyable reading. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to enjoy an intriguing story.

Comprei para treinar a leitura em inglês. Livro interessante, com a história com diversos desdobramentos. O kindle tem vários recursos de leitura em outra língua, que não conhecia, e são ótimos.

Ho scaricato questo ebook sul mio kindle paperwhite e l'ho letto in poco tempo perché la storia è avvincente e curiosa.L'ho letto molto prima che uscisse il film in america e in italia e devo dire che la storia come spesso accade è molto più interessante in versione originale quindi consiglio di leggere questo libro, scaricandolo sui vostri ebook preferibilmente per l'ecologia e anche perché l'esperienza di leggere su kindle (nel mio caso) è davvero unica, niente riflessi, in spiaggia è comodissimo...ma questa è un altra recensione. buona lettura a tutti, salviamo gli alberi!!