By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Rachel Watson, the protagonist of Paula Hawkins' psychological thriller, The Girl On the Train, is the very definition of the unreliable narrator. She is a character who gives her first person account of the events but it is hampered by her psychological state which is filled with rash judgments and blackouts caused by frequent alcoholism.
Rachel is a very depressed woman for many reasons. She turned to alcohol to cope with her inability to bear children. Her husband, Tom, left her for another woman and they live in Tom and Rachel's old home with their infant daughter. Rachel lost her job because of habitual drunkenness and still rides the train to and from work, convincing her roommate that she is still employed, but is actually job searching and beating herself up over her guilt and despair over her current situation.
While riding the train, she sees a seemingly happily married couple through a window. She becomes obsessed with the couple that she names "Jess" and "Jason" picturing their lives as perfect. She imagines Jason as a doctor and Jess as an art gallery owner and the two have a loving marriage of frequent sex, romantic dates, and amorous expressions. As Rachel's life spirals more out of control, she becomes obsessed with her imaginative perspective of Jess and Jason.
What is particularly fascinating is as we find out about Rachel's life, we also get into the lives of "Jess" and "Jason" which are hardly the paragons of perfection of Rachel's fantasy. Instead Jess, who is actually named Megan, is just as troubled as her observer. Megan is given to frequent anxiety attacks, feels stifled in her marriage to Scott (not "Jason"), and commits acts of infidelity with other men. The portrayals of Megan and Rachel reveal how little that we know of people. Even when we imagine they live lives better than ours, theirs may be the same or worse than our own.
Rachel's fantasies of Megan and Scott's life comes to a head when Megan turns up missing. Unfortunately, Rachel has no memory of the night Megan was missing and Tom says he saw her in the area in a violent drunken state, which needless to say does not bode well for an alibi. Hoping to make things right, Rachel ingratiates herself into the investigation and in Scott's life.
Tension mounts as Rachel cannot account for that missing time nor what happened or why she was bleeding afterwards. She becomes suspicious of Scott and of herself. The Reader has no preconceived knowledge of Rachel's actions so they are finding out events as she is. Hawkins also cleverly withholds information from The Reader until the time is right.
As the investigation continues, Rachel becomes the proverbial woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown always one drink away from oblivion. She knows she has a problem, but feels unable to do anything about it. Alcohol becomes a security blanket that she clings to until it chokes her with her avoidance of the troubles in her life and what happened to Megan.
It takes until Rachel learns the truth of that night from an unlikely source that she takes some positive changes to her life. She calls to question herself and the people around her including those she thought she could trust.
When Megan was a ghost, an unimaginable standard, Rachel felt that she was doomed to fall. Then when she learned the truth of who Megan was and the truth of her disappearance does Rachel take stock in her own life and seeks to change it. That's when Hawkins makes the Unreliable Narrator more Reliable.
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