The girl on the train Review

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The girl on the train is one of those books that I found out about after they made a movie of it. The trailer did not impress me, but when I opened the book, I was hooked. It’s about a woman who drinks to numb the pain of heartbreak.

Rachel’s drunken narrative in the book is intriguing; you can almost feel the frustration of trying to retrieve a memory lost in the haze of total inebriation, a memory that could free you or doom you. It’s a story told from the perspective of three women, Rachel, with her pain; Megan with her dissatisfaction and Anna with her fierceness. The story goes back and forth in time; weaving through the thin strands of Rachel’s blurred recollections, around the shadowy corners of Megan’s feelings, with the sharp edges of Anna’s voice. Three women who are tied together by their choices which turn out to be life-changing.

At the start of the book, you delve into Rachel’s mind, and before you know it, you are drawn into her miserable and wistful thoughts of love lost and dreams shattered. When she sits in the train and gulps her gin and tonic, you can feel the icy tang of tonic and the buzz of gin in your blood. After reading the book, I had to watch the movie and, as is often the case, the book outshines it. Emily Blunt’s performance as Rachel is good, but Justin Theroux, who plays Tom, is disappointing and Luke Evans, who plays Scott, is dull as a door knob. Lisa Kudrow as Martha is very surprising, partly because that’s not in the book and partly because that’s the first time I saw her after the TV show FRIENDS. The movie does not pull you in seductively as does the book, but then it hardly ever does.

Wine trickles down the throat and clouds the mind, leading to dark thoughts and irrevocable acts. In the end, you have to let go of the numbing comfort of liquor and face your demons.

Movie rating- 2.5/5
Book rating- 3.5/5

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