The Girl On The Train is one of The New York Times’ bestseller books for 2015. Paula Hawkins is a British female author. She talks about female problems in most of her work. She writes about domestic violence and the dangers of alcohol. She was once a journalist and one can find that unique journalistic touch in her novels. The writing style of this novel is prosaic but is simple, easily understandable language. She is at her best when using metaphors such as blackbirds, trains, blood, alcohol, red signals etc.
Many reviewers have called this book a thriller novel. Some comparisons have been made with Gone Girl because of the fact that both discuss knowing a person. However, I found that not to be true; this novel is beyond being a psychological thriller or comparison with Gone Girl. This is a feministic novel, discussing gender discrimination and the suffering felt by females.
The title of the novel The Girl On The Train suggests that a girl witnesses the whole world from an outsider’s point of view. There are sometimes people who are silent viewers of our lives. We do not know them, who they are and where they live but they know all about us. The Girl On The Train signifies those people who pass us by and become part of our lives. The same sentiment is explained as a tagline on the cover of the book: “You don’t know her, but she knows you.”
There is also much significance of “blackbirds”, which are referred to in the prologue and also pictured on the back of the novel. These blackbirds point towards the miseries and sufferings of women. All these birds are black in colour; no one will pay attention to them. The same is the case with women; no one cares for their feelings and emotions. Rachel, the protagonist, herself talks about this: “The way I am living at the moment, is harder in the summer when there is so much daylight, so little cover of darkness, when everyone is out and about, being flagrantly, aggressively happy.”
This novel is a diary of psychologically disturbed girls Rachel, Anna and Megan. They all have to face many difficulties in their lives. The novel starts with the story of Rachel in the first person narrator and moves towards other first person narrators, Megan Hipwell and Anna.
Rachel is a lonely girl. She has no one with whom she can share her feelings. She lost her love five years ago. Her lover betrayed her and left her alone. She has to depend on others and now she can feel others’ miseries and usually associates them with her own. Rachel is a psychologically disturbed character due to her life’s miseries. As women are emotional creatures Rachel’s psychological condition also affects her daily life and the male characters around her responsible for this condition.
Anna has an unsecure life. All the time she fears Rachel because she married Rachel’s husband and they have a small baby girl. She seems to always be complaining about Rachel. Megan is not as miserable as Rachel. She also does not have a happy married life with Scott and during the novel someone kidnaps her. Megan had a secret love affair with some other man apart from her own husband, Scott, about which no one knows except Rachel. When someone kidnaps Megan, the police start investigation. During this investigation Rachel tells them about Megan’s secret love affair, one she witnessed from the train she takes everyday, a train that passes by Megan’s house, giving Rachel full view of whatever happens on her terrace and in her backyard.
For Paula Hawkins women are the kindest and most warmhearted creatures. They are sometimes people like Cathy, Rachel’s roommate, who are only kind towards us no matter how we behave with them. Cathy was not close to Rachel in university but, as the book progresses, she helps Rachel out when she is most in need. No male character around Rachel feels sorry for her; only Cathy feels her pain and consoles her in her lonely condition: “I really worry about her. It doesn’t help, her being alone all the time.”
Paula Hawkins talks about the pain one can have in their life; for that person life is nothing but a sour pill: “Life is not a paragraph and death is no parenthesis.” It is a common practice in all societies that males always blame females for all the pain and sufferings they feel in their lives. This novel challenges such stereotypes.
There is also much significance of the red signal in the novel. As there is marginalisation of women in all societies, they do not live their lives to the fullest. Most of the time, they have signals in their lives where they have to stop, whether they like it not, sometimes for short time periods and sometimes for longer time periods.
This work helps us understand a truer picture of the male, patriarchal society. This is a cleverly crafted piece of fiction where romance, suspense, mystery and thriller all are put together in the pages of one book.
The reviewer is a freelance columnist