The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
In this cinematic, engaging first novel, The Girl on the Train, some key classic devices of thriller/mystery fiction are made fresh and modern, most notably in the challenges of multiple narrators—the unreliable, alcoholic, voyeuristic commuter of the title, Rachel, whose “evidence” about a missing woman is complicated by the self-interested and naïve points of view of the two other narrators, Anna and Megan—and the ever-present devices of mobile phones and computers. Rachel’s contradictory and ruthless self-awareness belies a personality as apparently limp as the ominous pile of abandoned clothing that she notices—and she is a great noticer—day after day lying by the railroad tracks. We expect both will be picked up, dusted off, filled out, claimed. The story ends with a troubling narrative surprise, a dark twist on girl power and sisterhood, and a supportable claim to the runaway train of best-sellerdom that surely awaits.
