The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

This book has a lot of hype swirling around it and that makes me default to the first Batman movie. I call it "The Batman Theory" which I apply to many things. If something gets a phenomenal degree of hype, I tend to avoid it until everyone shuts up about it and they are pretty much finishing up the movie.  I then have this crazy urgency to get the book read and over with. Batman was such a disappointment to me, it took me years to get over the hype lie. Years. So I tend to apply this theory to hyped up books.

I jumped on this one rather quickly, one more time, just one more time to kill off my Batman theory.

I wasn't disappointed, well, okay maybe I was a bit. Only because I EXPECTED incredible paced thrills, action, murder and mayhem. 

Not entirely so.

Think Hitchcock and all will be fine.

The book is about a woman named Rachel. She takes the train to London every day. During her daily stops at a station she observes a couple living in one of the homes along the tracks and gives them fake names. "Jake and Jess." Here, Rachel indulges herself with some happiness with a blissful marital  fantasy world that "Jake and Jess" live in. It helps her cope with her own less than perfect life.

One day, during a stop, Rachel observes something especially upsetting. After that she ends up going to the police weaving herself into the story while barely holding on due to her drinking but knowing that in all this confusion, she knows something. 

She just can't remember. 

And I can't tell you another damn thing in the description department.

What I liked about this book was the maddening descent into a very troubled world of marriage. Of alcoholism and what we lose, what we hope for and how we search for answers. I know that's vague but I don't want to give the story away. It took me a while to find Rachel endearing but I did about half way in. She was a complicated character and the author did a remarkable job in concealing Rachel but exposing her at the same time. I love it when an author can do that. 

What I didn't like was the slow pace at first, but that was totally on me. I was too busy to enjoy the Hitchcock type thriller I have always loved. I also noticed that the book is following a new trend in films and books, no extraneous characters. It's disturbing at first, it's like watching Castaway, you are completely ruffled over the isolated situation but so infatuated with it by the end of the movie. I think I do like this whole new effect. It somehow makes the story "clean" in all its messiness.

Buy it, Borrow it but don't skip it.

PS They really need to STOP this whole "if you loved Gone Girl you will love this book"craze. It's not Gone Girl it's not even remotely CLOSE to Gone Girl. No comparisons, they are two different books.

Speak Softly, She Can Hear by Pam Lewis

Every so often I pick out a book that I am not so sure about.  The types of books  I may find on BookGorilla or recommended in the upper right hand corner on Goodreads. To be honest, I have no idea where this came from. I wish I had kept a lifetime list of books that just happen,  I can't even give that list a proper title but they usually end up being a fine read. And I always learn later the author has been around with other published books, much to my chagrin. This author has two other books.

Speak Softly, She Can Hear is a thriller by Pam Lewis. Dated back to the sixties when NYC parents were nagging their daughters to do well so they can get  into Vassar. Carole Mason had parents of such nature but due to her weight and making the wrong types of friends (though she was brilliant) placed her in a horror of a situation up in Stowe Vermont. That one night changed her life completely. She was only 16.

Letting her parents down was the second heart plunk right after the "situation" in Stowe, a dark happening where I had a hard time believing something of that sort would even exist back then  (how old fashion of me, well, obtuse really.) Carole spends the next decade escaping and  running from something that would destroy her life if revealed.  Her on-again off-again prep school friend, Naomi, who was in Stowe that night, seems to pop up in her life at the very wrong times along with.Eddie, another player from the night in Stowe, creating his evil Carole must endure as payment. Carole is a bundle of nerves and continues on running after many encounters from the past. 

Including the own tormented voice inside her head.

People on the lam books tend to make me highly intense. I clench my teeth, rub my forehead, shut the book and run off to do something else like read a magazine but I always return.  Even though I may not like the main character at times, I rooted Carole Mason on with vigor.  Carole, at one point meets Rachel who is  pregnant and lost whom Carole becomes  intently kind to and tries with all her heart to help her. I almost feel like I was reading a female version of The Talented Mr. Ripley to a very small degree.

 By the time I reached the climax of the story, I wanted my world to suspend for a time.  I needed to figure this mess along side of Carole because by then I really wanted things to be better.   I was surprised with the ending, and I always give a book a big thumbs up for surprises that elude me as I am usually on the mark figuring things out early on. 

One thing that completely amazed me (at forty-seven I should NOT be amazed at this point) was the lack of technology, it made me think, time and time again, why doesn't she get a damn cell phone?  But, it's the sixties! How dull of me, then again, how exciting to read characters that survive on pure instinct. Bravo!

Borrow it.

The Dinner by Herman Koch

I read this book a while back during a stressful period in my life. So I was not paying attention to it until midway through. Then I locked my sights on it and am here to recommend it.

Housekeeping first:

1. The Dinner is a book that has been compared to Gone Girl and we need to stop right here.

It's nothing like Gone Girl.

The characters in The Dinner are far worse disordered.

Gone Girl has characters of loathsome qualities but there was a bit of a sympathy factor for them as the reader. (It was a very slight sympathy factor.) The books are two different stories.Both in high regard (unless you talk to a few of my book group members. I had to promise to read Harry Potter so they would at the very least, go see Gone Girl in the movies, they are a very loving but tough crowd.) 

we can talk about my blatant rebellion on not reading happy potter another day.

2.It also received the rap that it was "very disturbing" which I have to add, not so. I have read disturbing and this book scores a five out of ten in the very disturbing reads category. But we can also say disturbing can be subjective. I say it's a five.

The premise: Two brothers meet at an expensive restaurant to talk about Serge's career as possibly the next PM of the Netherlands. Babett and Claire, their wives, respectively, attend as they are a part of this family business that must be attended to. Paul, the other  brother,  is a man of many neurotic intensities and complexities.  They have business to discuss before Serge goes forth into his candidacy. 

This business is their sons who committed a violent act.

The entire book is over many dinner courses in the restaurant. They are allowed to venture off for walks or mental back stories to build up the story. Serge has a career to uphold and Paul is a curmudgeon who has a lot of violence boiling inside of him. They have a lot to go back to in memory that adds so much to the story. A good twist here and there, you won't be able to guess what is going to happen next.

Where does violence begin? How is it cultivated and cooked down to a fine mixture? 

You will have many questions.

It's a book that I have a bit of a hard time reviewing as I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone. I downloaded the book after reading the premise and was transfixed with this very psychological, gastronomical, and violent story. It was written well, it was executed with brilliance in using a full meal/evening to tell this disturbing story. and I tend to like the whole "sit down for a whole drawn out meal while we go back and forth to get the end" story. 

Borrow it.

Or keep a check on Kindle for a low price, it has happened here and there.