Squiggly: Life is not a paragraph
And death is not a parenthesis.
I have recently finished a book that I have been itching my hands on since the day I saw it a bookstore-The Girl on the Train: A Novel
When I first saw the cover I immediately thought of the poem In the Station Of The Metro. I first read the poem when I was a freshman in college and I was in love with it. I’m attached to it. And so, I became intrigued by the book by correlation.
I read the back cover and was curious. I don’t read much of the thriller/mystery genre because I don’t get much satisfaction from it. I’d rather much watch a mystery/thriller. Of course that doesn’t go much to say that I don’t appreciate it. Nonetheless, I was curious enough to want to buy it and not look for a free online pdf version of it. But it was relatively expensive, more so than the books I usually purchase, so I left it at the bookstore.
Last week, I felt reckless enough to splurge and I bought it. I didn’t read it right away tho for, as I mentioned previously, I haven’t finished a book in a while. The farthest I’ve gone it to something like the 30th page and then I just stop. There’s something wrong with me but we won’t talk about that.
And so, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it.
I didn’t like it. And then I hated it. And then I was furious. And then I just gave up on trying to feel anything.
I finished it though. It dragged on for the most parts. There were no reliable narrators. Everyone was self-centered and egotistical. The characters were all a mess and kept on making poor life decisions. The plot didn’t move even after 20 pages. Or maybe it did. But it didn’t feel like it. Most parts of the book were monologues and soliloquy of how messed up they and their lives are, of how aware they are that they are making a mistake while still committing that mistake. It was very frustrating. The plot developed ever so slowly. It took its sweet time to unravel.
I was very disappointed. The only thing that kept me from giving up on finishing this book wass the realization of how expensive it was and how dumb it was of me to buy it.
But the one thing that I admire about this book is the humanistic portrayal of the three “main” female characters (there are quotation marks because I’m not entirely convinced they are the main characters but the book changes between those three perspectives so I just assumed). It shows well about the struggles of having to choose. The seemingly easy but actually very difficult choice of being a better person, the choice of quitting a bad habit or an addiction, the daily and frequent struggle of having to choose yourself over your misery. The reality of moving one, that it’s not a switch. It’s a fight within yourself, whether to wither in your misery or to pick yourself up. The self-pity in being so pathetic but not entirely enough to make yourself stop being so pathetic.
I suppose it could be praised for its honest depiction of the human life, several aspects of it anyway. That it’s not so much fiction-worthy or very dramatic. It’s just pathetic and mundane and filled with self-hate and not very eventful unless you throw in some missing woman and some murder.
I wouldn’t recommend it, not even to the mystery/thrilled obsessed bookworms. It didn’t excite me as much as it frustrated me. Although my opinions could be invalid. I haven’t read much of books like these anyway.
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