The girl on the train

Author: Paula Hawkins

Given how popular this book is it was a pleasant surprise when I was notified that the book was waiting for me in the library! I further surprised myself by finishing the book in just a few days! Typically it takes me at least a month to finish reading a book and in most of the cases, much more than a month. However I happened to be lucky that after I got this book some free time in the form of a long weekend came upon me. And of course the novel was so engrossing that I just didn’t feel like putting it down till I’d read the end.

The book is about – well as the name suggests – a girl on the train! She takes the train every day in the morning as well as the evening as if she’s going for work. Just to fool her room-mate into thinking that she has a job. She doesn’t have one. She’s an alcoholic and can’t stop drinking – she can drink any time of the day. Having gone through a divorce some time back, she is not in the best of mental state. While in the train, she often spots a couple in the balcony of their home. Given how wretched her life is, she likes to fantasize about how wonderful their life is. How perfect the wife is and how caring the husband is. One day she sees the wife’s photo in the newspaper and finds out that the wife has disappeared. This is when the adventure begins. Since she used to see the couple every other day, she feels she has valuable information that she can provide to the police and feels very involved in the case. Slowly and gradually she takes it upon herself to find out what happened to the wife – this gives a purpose to her life. The whole journey of how she unearths what happened to the wife is very engrossing! I don’t want to reveal too many details lest I spoil somebody’s fun.

Loved reading this book! Highly recommend it to everyone.