The Girl on the Train is the first book by Paula Hawkins, a journalist for fifteen years before hopping into published fiction. Born in Zimbabwe, she has, however, been a Londoner since 1989. The main character, Rachel, opens the book and spends a lot of time on the train to commute from her town Ashbury to London, looking at random things — rags on the train track, suburban architecture, fellow passengers. As the train runs down the track through a blur of Victorian houses, Rachel gets a regular glimpse of the life of a young couple whenever the train does its regular stop at a signal just before a station. She ‘sees’ them so often that she feels she knows them closely and has attributed names to them. The ball starts rolling when Rachel sees something ‘shocking’ one day, and volunteering this information gets her deeply involved in the lives of select members of that neighborhood.
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