This story is not just about one girl, but 3 main female characters. It is told through the eyes of 3 ladies - Rachel, Megan and Anna. The narration comes in the form of diary entries, from the perception of 3 unreliable narrators. Seeing the same day and similar events through the eyes of 3 person is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle; the whole can only surface completely when all 3 pieces are interlocked at the right places. This immediately post a challenge to the reader, especially since Rachel's story started on 5 July 2013; Megan's story started 1 year prior to this date and Anna's story didn't start until 15 days later. The entire story spanned only 6 weeks, till 18 August, but if we add a whole year of Megan's story to it, it felt like we knew her and Rachel all their life. Megan's bits and pieces of the past was interwoven into the relevant events of Rachel's present, and thus, it is very easy to be misled by who exactly was Megan having an affair with that eventually led to her murder.
There was another female character who was a constant in this story, and that's Cathy, Rachel's sympathetic girlfriend. She patiently put up with Rachel's need for an accommodation, her uncountable times where she needed a drink and her sympathy for Rachel even after she found out that her friend had lied about her job.
And finally the two male characters who interacted with Rachel extensively - Tom, her ex-husband and Scott, Megan's husband. Not forgetting Kamal, the strikingly handsome psychiatrist who was my prime suspect for a good part of the book. The fact that Kamal was who I thought as an obvious answer to the mystery was largely due to the lagging storytelling of Megan's life in between the timeline of Rachel's. Megan's relationship with Kamal didn't exist; but the reader is led to believe it did, due to the cleverly placed timelines adjacent to each other. The really relationship was with someone else, and it wasn't reveal until the very end.
The only frustration while going through the book is Rachel's ever need to drink; it was just a little to much before Rachel started to sober up. The turn from addiction to drinking to fully free of alcohol was a great relief to the reader, especially since it was the drink that made Rachel blackout at the most crucial moments before Megan was taken away. It was frustrating seeing Rachel searching through her leaky memories to try to reconstruct those moments.
Rachel's unreliable narration was brilliant in bringing the readers into her world and seeing things in her perspective. She was not the only Girl on the Train; we all were on the same train with her.
Reading Challenge categories - unreliable narrator; female author; book made into film; debut novel.
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