The Girl on the Train

LoveReading Says

Shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2015.

A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.

In the footsteps of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep, the unreliable narrator domestic drama of untruths is the new 'hot' genre. The author was best known under another name for chick lit entertainments. Hawkins's book is the first stone in a veritable avalanche of titles mining the territory as publishers rush in with a vengeance and has already catapulted to the top of the charts both in the UK and the USA. And deservedly so. The parallel narratives of three women protagonists twist and turn in an unsettling spiral where nothing is what it seems, from what Rachel sees from her train window or Megan does watching the same train from her house by the line, or even Anna down the same road who, coincidentally, stole Rachel's husband. Deliberately unlikeable and dishonest characters add spice to the devilish web of proceedings and make this a terribly clever hit.

Every now and again a debut novel really breaks through and shines. This is one. After a slow start the pace picks up and tension builds through the many twist and turns. Strangely you keep re-evaluating your opinion as to whom the real villain of the piece may be – all very clever. Written in three first-person female voices you slowly see how the women connect and how past events in their lives have helped shape them into the people they are today. Rachel, the girl on the train, is a highly unreliable narrator, Megan is the girl the mystery surrounds as she disappears and Anna is married to Rachel’s ex-husband and neighbour of Megan. It is very good indeed.

Maxim Jakubowski

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