The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a mini bookstore in the library foyer here. They have a random assortment of things on some side shelves for 50 cents or so, and then they have this little shop where they have culled out some more coveted things and sell them for a bit more. And it's funny what you can get if you are just willing to wait for it to show up here. I had heard the buzz about The Girl in the Train when it came out, but I'm never that interested to read what everyone else is reading while they are reading it. I mean, I just might get around to reading Harry Potter soon.

But here was this nice hardback of Hawkins' book displayed face out for four bucks, and I grabbed it. Not only that, it jumped to the top of my quite high TBR pile. And it's proved one of the more enjoyable reads of recent days, partly because it was a guilty pleasure when I was supposed to be reading other things, which always adds an aura, I find.

I probably liked this book for the same reasons some others might dislike it. For most of the book, the protagonist is drunk, or recovering, or relapsing. She can't get over her ex-husband, who left her for another, except he didn't leave her, he forced her to leave him and took up residence in their former home, which she just happens to pass every day on the commuter train. Galling, no?

I thoroughly enjoyed how hapless and yet somehow sympathetic Rachel was, even while everyone in her vicinity is scandalized by her inability to just get a hold of herself. Everyone else in the book is more or less appalling too--it's just that most of them don't have the self-awareness to grasp that.

It's a great concept novel, that maybe goes on a little too long, but certainly I can see a girl on a train reading The Girl on the Train and finding that it helps the long commute go by, especially if, every once in a while, she takes a cue from the book and looks out the window at the passing houses...


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