Perspective Makes Hawkins Novel a Page Turner

By Tara Martinelli

Paula Hawkins’ debut thriller novel, “The Girl on the Train” keeps its readers on their toes. Ram Archives.

Perspective is everything in the world we live in. I never truly appreciated its significance in storytelling until I read “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins. Throughout the story, this concept of perspective left me puzzled and curious, but eventually gave me clarity. On a purely logistical level, perspective played a crucial role in the understanding of this book because of the switching narrators from chapter to chapter. This story definitely required a lot of concentration at first, but once I got to know the characters and their unique characteristics, keeping track of who was speaking came very easily.

The story has three primary narrators, all women, and all connected in the most unconventional of ways. The first woman introduced, and arguably the main character, is Rachel. Rachel is recently divorced and an even more recently unemployed alcoholic, living in a flat outside of London with an old college acquaintance. However, in order to keep her flatmate in the dark about her job loss, Rachel rides the train to and from London every day at her usual work times. When Rachel is not riding the train, she is usually drinking her sorrows away to the point of blacking out or mindlessly wandering around London. However, when she is on the train, she is content. The best part of her train ride is when she passes one particular house with a picture-perfect couple sitting lovingly outside on their patio.

After watching this couple day in and day out, Rachel feels as though she knows them. She even assigns names to them to make them even more real to her. This is the love that she had and then lost. This couple was even more significant to her because they lived on the street that she lived on with her ex-husband, Tom. After Tom’s affair with Anna, Rachel moved out and Anna moved in. And yes, this is as icky as it sounds.

Nevertheless, Rachel enjoys her time on the train until one day, she spots something strange on her way home from London. She sees the woman (we later find out that her name is Megan), passionately kissing another man. Later that day, Megan goes missing. The story continues by alternating between narrations of Megan, Anna and Rachel. These women are connected through diverse circumstances that are somehow related to this event. The reason I love this book so much is because if the story was told from just one point of view, so much would be left out and readers would never receive any answers. The story is deep and complex, revealing so much about relationships and innate human qualities. For instance, Megan and Rachel never actually meet, but they influence each other’s lives more than either of them realizes.

I also was prompted to consider how women have been portrayed in literature throughout history. Women have oftentimes been made out to be crazy, irrational characters. At times each of these women seem crazy in their own ways, but after looking more closely at this idea of perspective and how important it can be, I was forced to think otherwise. Only after following the story through these three points of view was I able to achieve clarity on what actually happened that night. And I have to say, I never saw it coming.