The Girl on the Train

"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins is a mystery: the characters are all mysterious in their own ways, the events/plot are depicted in a mysterious format, and the reader just might become mysterious too in trying to predict the inevitable twist that is a requirement of all mysteries.  Because of the mysterious format the author chose, the book is anything but formulaic.  The entire story is told in first person, switching points of view from the female main characters involved in the story. 

Because I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who have not read this book yet, I am not going to discuss the plot and I am not going to discuss the characters.  I will simply say that the foundation, the plot of the story was shaky, crumbly, like a piece of bread that you know is too soft to butter, but you try to spread it on there anyway – a story that you can’t put down, a story that gets under your skin, a story that forces you to understand it.

The plot gradually unfolds through its reading and so the language is not especially flowing.  The story is mainly delivered in dialog, observation, and short descriptions – chunky cold butter on a slice of too soft bread.  This may sound harsh, but it works for a mystery book.   As with most mysteries, the answers, the plot, the language all makes sense in the end – put that cold bread and butter in a hot skillet and the butter will melt into a delicious toast.

My favorite quote from the book is actually inspired by a poem written by e.e. cummings, “Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis." I think is an excellent phrase that defines each of the characters.  Life can’t be confined to simply one paragraph and death between parenthesis is simply a date.  No, life is the dash between the date of birth and the date of the death; it is the unstated, it is the experience, it is what only the person who lived knows.  If that sounds interesting, then you should read "The Girl on the Train" to find out what each of the characters knows.