The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015. Penguin Audio. ISBN 9781611763731). Alright. My wife Rene’ and I didn’t actually listen to the entire story on our way to Lake Sakakawea State Park to spend a long weekend with our son Dylan and his wife Shelly. We were near the finish line, close the end of this very gripping thriller, when we pulled the blue Pacifica and boat and trailer into our campsite. There were 2 and 1/2 disks left to the tale which, once we finished our time at the park, we gobbled up on the way home. All in all, a satisfying yarn. Here’s what I think.
Hawkins is a master of this slowly unfolding tale , a story reminiscent of Hitchcock at his best. Her writing, however, at times, became a bit bogged down in narrative description when I so urgently wanted the characters to move along. There’s a bit of mystery at the front end of the tale, what with the disappearance of a troubled young wife, Meghan Hipwell from the neighborhood that the protagonist, Rachel Watson, used to live in. Rachel is divorced from Tom, who, during their marriage, took up with Anna. Tom and Anna are now happily married, living with their infant daughter in the bungalow that Tom and Rachel once called home. The Watson house is a few doors down from the home of Meghan and Scott Hipwell. The author does a nice job of describing the trains that roll past the Watson and Hipwell bungalows perched on the edge of a London suburb. It is on one of these local trains that Rachel, pretending to commute to work to appease her landlady, sees what she thinks to be a crime at the Hipwell house. At first, she thinks nothing of what she’s seen. But then, as the disappearance of Meghan remains unsolved, Rachel decides to tell the police what she knows. Or thinks she knows.
Ms. Hawkins has drawn a fine, fine character in giving us Rachel Watson, a woman seemingly stuck in the past, unable to give up a marriage that has long since died, a woman whose affinity for drink renders her version of what she saw from the train suspect and unreliable when she finally reveals what she knows, or thinks she knows, to the police. The actresses portraying the three main characters all fit their parts in this audio version of the book. The voices of Rachel and Meghan are especially compelling. There is plenty of psychological drama to this story though, truth be told, I figured out who the killer was about 1/3 of the way through the story. The fact that the author didn’t do a better job of providing additional suspects, however, doesn’t detract from Girl on the Train being a “good read.”
A great way to spend hours in the car rolling over the North Dakota prairie.
4 stars out of 5.
Peace.
Mark
