The titular girl on the train is Rachel, an alcoholic, unemployed divorcee who commutes into London every day because she can’t admit to her flatmate that she lost her job. The train takes her past her old neighbourhood, where her ex-husband now lives with his current wife and their baby daughter. In the same neighbourhood lives another couple, whose lives Rachel fantasizes about. She makes up names and stories about them and how happy they are together. Until something goes wrong, and Rachel thinks she […]
The Girl on the Train: got off one stop too early
I’d heard (mostly) good things about Paula Hawkins’ thriller and was excited for a mystery to round out my year. (Only one book left to my half cannonball, and hopefully enough time to eek out a victory!). I chose to tackle this one as an audiobook, and it worked very well in this format, though I can’t give a completely enthusiastic report; Hawkins ran out of steam and the pay-off at the end fell flat. Each chapter jumps around to the perspective of the three […]
You’re all liars. Every last one of you.
This is a book, and now a movie, that should not be spoiled, so don’t read past the spoiler warning if you haven’t already read the book. Although, I was 99% sure I knew who the murderer was and why fairly quickly. I wasn’t surprised, but this book is really more about uncovering memory and revealing the things we already know, than it is an actual whodunnit. Rachel is an alcoholic who gets black out drunk. She is having a hard time moving on from […]
What the hell did I get up to last night?
3.5 stars Rachel, trying to drown the sorrows of her recent divorce in alcohol and denial travels to London on the train every morning and back to the suburb where she shares a flat with an old friend in the evenings. As she passes the area where she used to live, she observes a seemingly golden couple and makes up a fantasy narrative about their life to comfort herself in her loneliness. She’s named them Jess and Jason and believes them to have a perfect […]
Gillian Flynn-like murder mystery with some horrible characters
When a random woman at Costco goes out of her way to recommend a book to you, then you listen–especially when that book is already on your to-read list. I had to wait forever for The Girl on the Train (2015) by Paula Hawkins to become available at my library. I guess I wasn’t the only one who had heard good things. The Girl on the Train is a murder mystery. In many ways it reminded me of Gone Girl and other books by Gillian Flynn–primarily because both […]
Well, Somebody Did Something, Right?
I know I’m a bit late to this book. Honestly, I wasn’t motivated to read it until I saw the preview for the film adaptation, which involves Emily Blunt (yes!) and the woman who played Cora in “Music and Lyrics By,” that Hugh Grant / Drew Barrymore film that no one saw but that I will watch whenever it is on. I knew that involved a possibly unreliable narrator, but that was about it. Maybe minor spoilers below … Still here? Okay. I’m glad that […]