THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins (Doubleday), 380 pages, $24.95 paper. Rating: NNN
Nasty thrillers by women are becoming a major literary trend. Witness The Girl On The Train, the debut novel from Paula Hawkins, that’s been sitting atop the New York Times bestseller list for the past three weeks.
Except for latching on to the new fad and the soon-to-be well-worn device of the unreliable narrator, I’m not sure what it’s doing there.
Londoner Rachel takes the same train every day past the house where her ex-husband, Tom, lives with his new wife, Anna. But instead of focusing her gaze on them, she obsesses over a couple living a few doors down, Megan and Scott (whose names she does not know).
When Megan goes missing, Rachel inserts herself into the investigation and winds up looking guilty after Megan’s body is finally found. She’s penned threatening emails to Anna and Tom, and she’s an alcoholic prone to blackouts, so who knows what she does while blind drunk? She was definitely around the crime scene, has a vague feeling that she saw something – but if she’s not the killer, she can’t nail down who is.
Shifting points of view between each of the characters, Hawkins delivers a decent thriller, written with enough energy to keep the pages turning. But don’t confuse it with Gone Girl, to which it’s been compared, or Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, another nail-biter written by a woman. Gillian Flynn has way better literary chops than Hawkins and both she and Pessl tackle themes that go beyond the whodunit narrative.
Gone Girl is as much about New York City literary life and Midwestern dreariness as it is about a missing person. And Pessl, with her ingenious websites attached to Night Film, investigates the meaning of celebrity as deeply as she does the question of whether there’s a killer film director on the loose.
Sure, The Girl On The Train offers some insight into the alcoholic personality, but drunks can be interesting for only so long.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
