Review: The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this book *exactly* because I enjoyed the movie “Gone Girl”, and lots of reviews characterized this as a grittier and faster “Gone Girl”. I have enjoyed it, and the comparisons to the aforementioned hit is unavoidable. Since I didn’t actually read “Gone Girl” (only saw the movie), I cannot say whether it’s grittier and faster-paced, but it didn’t strike me as either.

What did strike me was the character building in the book. The small cast is well developed, with layers upon layers of reasons, secrets, regrets, desires, and all sorts of emotional baggage. Not that there aren’t any holes in the characters stories - there are huge gaps in their history, in their thinking, there are many things that get only alluded to but never explained. Also, I get the impression that the author (a woman) and her characters are all basically sexists; the women are defined by their relationship to men, and by their pregnancies and kids, while the men are mostly misogynist sociopaths. Still, they are all complex, realistic and generally messed up individuals (hey, all societies are full of women and men just like that!).

The story centers on Rachel, an alcoholic whose life is in shambles, but that one day witnesses something from the train that puts her in the middle of a murder mystery. Her story is tortuous, sometimes torturous; it’s painful to hear it. This is not an action-packed thriller, it’s a slow unraveling of people and mysteries. I found it very enthralling; I suppose it’s a car-crash rubbernecking effect. The denouement is not specially surprising, but the execution is good enough. In the end, it’s an interesting read.

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Review: A Short Stay in Hell

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fascinating short-story! It tells the story of a man sent to hell, through no fault of his own - he simply didn’t follow the True Religion (spoiler alert - it’s none of the major ones!). His version of hell is a gigantic library, in which the word gigantic is a terrible understatement; it contains all the books that were and could be written, including all possible garbled text. The dammed must search the library until they find the book that contains the story of their life. The setting is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babylon, and the book perfectly invokes Borges’s writing and feel. It is interesting, funny, perverse, sad, full of anguish, it makes you think; it’s a really well done work. At times I think the only fault is that it is too short; I want read more about it! But I came to the conclusion that it is exactly as it must be - full of mystery, of unrealized wishes, and of longing. A must-read!

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