The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins published 2015 was a nice suprise and I say that because in the past few years I have had disappointing experiences with bestselling psychological thrillers:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn  The Dinner by Herman Koch, And Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell to name a few.

And so when I picked up The Girl On the Train I was cautious but I didn't need to be because though this is a book that takes twists and turns they are believable, the writing is first rate, particularly in the creation of Rachel Watson who narrates a major part of this novel.  The two other narrators are Anna Watson, who is the new wife of Rachel's ex-husband Tom and Megan Hipwell the beautiful young woman who lives with her husband Scott a few doors down from Anna and Tom.

But mainly this is Rachel's story and when we first meet Rachel her life has gone downhill.  She married her husband Tom a few years back but found out she was incapable of having children which she so wanted.    Rachel tried everything but it was not to be and she began drinking heavily, arguing with Tom and he began an affair with Anna, the woman who is now his new wife.  And so Rachel who is now a full blown alcoholic aimlessly rides the train each morning to London and rides it back home each evening because she has told her roomate Cathy that she still has a job when in reality she was fired a few months back.  

But the daily train ride for Rachel has become something she looks forward to, a source of excitement in her life because one of the train stops looks out on her old house where Tom now lives with Anna.  Rachel is obsessed not so much by Tom and Anna anymore but rather the attractive young couple who live a few doors down.  Rachel doesn't know them but she can see their patio from the train.  She has named them Jason and Jess and as Rachel tells us: : 

"Jess is often out there in the mornings, especially in the summer, drinking her coffee.  Sometimes, when I see her there, I feel as though she sees me, too.  I feel as though she looks right back at me, and I want to wave.  I'm too self-conscious. I don't see Jason quite as much, he's away alot with work. But even if they're not there, I think about what they might be up to.  Maybe this morning they've both got the day off and she's lying in bed while he makes breakfast, or may they've gone for a run together because that's the sort of thing they do".  

Rachel is not jealous of Jason and Jess.  Quite the contrary.  She is kind of in love with them and likes to think about the wonderful life they have planned.  But then one morning from her train window Rachel spots Jess on the patio in a romantic embrace with another man.  Rachel is devastated and hurt. How could Jess cheat on Jason ike this and she feels a kinship with Jason since she knows what being cheated on feels like.  And so Rachel decides to go to Jason and Jess' house on a Saturday evening when Jess is out and inform Jason about his wife's infidelity. 

It's a very bad idea of course and the next morning Rachel wakes up with an injury to her head, some blood on her clothes, and no memory of the Saturday night before since she was in an alcoholic blackout.  A day later Rachel is readiing the paper and learns the real name of Jess and Jason.  They are Scott and Megan Hipwell and the newspapers are reporting that Megan went missing the night Rachel went to Scott's house to warn him.  The police find Megan's body a few days later and it's now a homicide.  

So what happened?  Who killed Megan?  And will Rachel's memory of that night return to provide answers?   There is more than one suspect and I was kept guessing throughout the book and most important for me the ending was satisfying, even hopeful.   

I would say that how you feel about The Girl On the Train will hinge on how you feel about Rachel.  Some will be exasperated but I was drawn to her.  People suffer disappointments in life and sometimes they can't pull themselves together.  And in the case of Rachel to give herself something to look forward to she imagined an ideal life for a beautiful young couple only to discover she didn't know them at all.   I highly recommend The Girl On the Train 

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Normally I don't read poetry but I have been thinking about taking the Ray Bradbury Challenge where you read a short story, a poem and an essay each day.  And so in searching for a poem to read I found The Journey by the award winning poet Mary Oliver and  I wanted to share: 

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver, 

The 2022 Victober Challenge

October is a great month for book challenges but as a reader I feel torn about which challenge to take.  It's the month of Halloween and so should I read novels in the horror, gothic and paranormal genre?  But as anyone who follows some of the excellent and fun booktubers out there knows, October is also Victober where fans of all things Victorian devote the month to reading 19th century British literature.  

I love both genres, Victorian and Gothic horror, but for this October I have decided to go with Victorian literature.  Don't know how far I'll get and according to the five booktubers hosting Victober this year there is no pressure.  You only have to commit to reading one Victorian novel during the month of October.   But if you want to take the full challenge the booktubers have come up with five interesting categories to complete by October 31, 2022: 

1.  Choose a Victorian novel where chronic illness or disability is represented - I have decided to go with My Lady Ludlow by Elizabeth Gaskell 

2.  Choose a Victorian Coming of Age Story - My choice will be Love and Mr. Lewisham by H. G. Wells

3.  Choose a Victorian Short Story - A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins

4.  Read a Victorian book and then watch a film adaptation - Washington Square by Henry James.  He became a British Citizen in 1915 so he qualifies for the Challenge.

5.  Choose to read a Victorian poem. - I am going with a poem by Ann Bronte

Also for Victober the read-a-long is the Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy where the goal is to read two chapters a night starting October 1st and since I have never read Hardy this is a good way to finally do so.

Alot of the fun of Victober is discovering how many really excellent booktubers are out there.  The five hosts running this year's challenge for example have very fine video blogs:  They are: 

Katie, Books and Things

Kate Howe

Marissa, Blatantly Bookish

Petra U

Ros, Scallydandling about the Books

If you type their names into the search engine their videoblogs will pop up and when it comes to Victorian literature Katie at Books and Things knows everything there is to know. 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

For the 2022 Back to the Classics category - Choose a Wild Card Classic I decided to go with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe published 1958. I had heard about the novel and since it was published the year I was born I decided to give it a read.

The author, Alan Sillitoe, was part of the Angry Young Men literary movement that formed in the UK in the 1950’s. They were working class young men who had come of age during the post World War II era.  They were in rebellion against society and the British class system and they wrote gritty, sexually frank novels and plays featuring men like themselves. 

Such is the case with Arthur Seaton the main character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur is a young man who lives in Nottingham, England and works as a machinist in a bicycle factory.  Arthur works hard, spends his Saturday nights at the pub getting drunk and he is quite the ladies man.  When the novel begins Arthur is having an affair with Brenda the wife of one of his coworkers at the factory but Arthur doesn’t seem worried about the risk he is taking or even feels much guilt:

"Arthur classified husbands into two main categories: those that looked after their wives, and those that were slow.  Jack fell into the latter class, one that Arthur, from experience, knew to be more extensive than the first. Having realised this quickly he had been lucky in love, and had his fun accordingly, making hay while the sun shone, growing up from the age of seventeen with the idea that married women were certainly the best women to know. He had no pity for a “slow” husband“.

In reality Arthur is taking enormous risks not only by having an affair with a married woman but also with his drinking.  When the novel begins for example Arthur is at the pub having gotten wasted and fallen down a flight of stairs. He’s okay but it ‘s a metaphor for where Arthur’s life is headed if he doesn’t turn things around.  

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is a novel way ahead of its time in dealing with issues that weren't discussed in the 1950's.  There are parts of this novel that are shocking and disturbing.  I can't say I liked Arthur and the author is not romanticising the life he is leading.   But Arthur and the other characters in the novel are drawn from real life, not having enough money, hanging out at the bars, having affairs with other men's wives and no thought to the future.   The dialogue between the characters can be a little difficult to decipher at times but it gives the novel a realistic tone and this is a very well written book.

Regarding the author, Allan Sillitoe, he grew up poor in Nottingham and his home was a violent one.  He would go on to write novels, plays, children's literature, a memoir but he is best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and his collection of short stories The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.  Sillitoe though his childhood was tough went on to have a good life, married for fifty years to the accomplished poet and translater Ruth Fainlight. They had two children.  Alan Sillitoe passed away in 2010 but today he is considered one of the most important British writers of the post World War II era.  Not bad for a young boy who had to quit school at 14.

The TBR File - Mrs Wiggs of The Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan Rice published 1901 was a big bestseller in it’s day and that always interests me.  So many authors and novels from the early 20th century have been forgotten but thanks to kindle people are beginning to read these books again.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch is a sweet novel which gives us important advise about life. The main character is Mrs. Wiggs, a widow living with her children in a very poor part of Louisville, Kentucky called the Cabbage Patch. The people who live there have very little and yet despite this Mrs. Wiggs has an optimistic spirit. She tries to see the best in life, never gives up and she loves her children dearly. It’s not great literature but I enjoyed it. Here is Mrs Wiggs giving her philosophy of life:

“Lots of folks is walkin’ ’round jes’ as dead as they’ll ever be. I believe in gittin’ as much good outen life as you kin—not that I ever set out to look fer happiness; seems like the folks that does that never finds it. I jes’ do the best I kin where the good Lord put me at, an’ it looks like I got a happy feelin’ in me ‘most all the time.”

Who was the author Alice Hegan Rice? She was a prolific novelist born in 1870 in Shelbyville, Kentucky and she came from a privileged background. When she was a young woman she worked at a mission in a very poor part of Louisville, Kentucky. It was a life changing experience and she wrote Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch based on her work at the mission.  Alice Hagen Rice would later help found the Cabbage Patch Settlement House which exists to this day.

Unmasking Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

"And there lay the crux of Alice’s undying appeal ... Alice acted the way you sometimes felt. If you kept a journal, or filled endless pages with dark, haunted poetry, or felt the stab of a singer speaking directly to you, so sweet and sad your heart could barely take it, you had a kindred spirit in Alice. Fiction or not, she was real. And she understood". - Rick Emerson, Unmasking Alice

When I was in high school in the 1970's there wasn't as large a young adult book market as there is today.  But one book that was certainly making the rounds was Go Ask Alice  published in 1971.  The book I assumed at the time (we all did) was the real life diary of a teenage girl who got caught up in the drug culture of the late 1960's and died from an overdose at age seventeen.  

In later years we would discover that Go Ask Alice was fiction.  The author, Beatrice Sparks and her publishers had presented the diary as real but in reality it was a novel.  But I never felt conned because I loved the book and so what was the big deal if the diary was marketed as real but wasn't?  Well, in Unmasking Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries (2022), Rick Emerson explains why it was a big deal.  But first he tells us about the author.

Beatrice Sparks was born in Idaho in 1917.  Her childhood was a difficult one.  Her father abandoned the family and Beatrice at 15 had to quit school and go to work.  She married young and her husband LaVorn Sparks had come from a childhood equally as difficult.  But Beatrice and LaVorn were a couple who despite the setbacks life had dealt them were determined to persevere and they did.   LaVorn would go on to be a wealthy business man and Beatrice raised her children and worked as a Mormon youth counselor.  

Beatrice also wrote and her job as a counselor gave her the inspiration for Go Ask Alice.  After the tremendous success of the book Beatrice in 1978 published Jay's Journal and as with Go Ask Alice it was marketed as a real diary this time written by a teenage boy who descends into a world of devil worship and animal sacrifice which ends in tragedy.

As Rick Emerson tells us, unlike Go Ask Alice the Jay of Jay's Journal is based very loosely on the life of an actual teenager, Alden Barrett, who committed suicide at age sixteen.  Alden's mother, sought out Beatrice Sparks after reading Go Ask Alice and she was hoping Sparks would tell Alden's story which could help others.  She gave Beatrice her son's diary and Sparks did include a number of Alden's diary entry's but the bulk of Jay's Journal is filled with fictional entry's presenting a very unflattering and false picture who everyone back in the Barrett's hometown of Pleasant Grove, Utah assumed was Alden's real diary.

In reality Alden, unlike the fictional Jay, was not into Satanism at all.  Alden suffered from depression and it eventually killed him.  That's the story Beatrice should have told and the publication of Jay's Journal with the made up nonsense caused the Barrett family alot of pain.  Beatrice would go on to write other fictional teen diaries which were presented as real.  She aso began referring to herself in print and in interviews as Beatrice Sparks PhD even though she never earned a PhD.  Rick Emerson does a good job of tracking all this down and he talks about how the publishing industry who knew this was all a hoax let it slide.  Interviewers over the years went along with Beatrice's inaccurate view of herself and her books as well.

Unmasking Alice is an interesting read, an important piece of investigative journalism about a very popular author and where we have been as a culture.  Did reading Unmasking Alice change my feelings about Go Ask Alice?  Not really.  I still like the novel and if we only read books by authors whose behavior we admire we would miss out on alot of great reads.

Mystical Paths by Susan Howatch

Mystical Paths by Susan Howatch (1992) is the fifth book in her wonderful series of Starbridge novels.  There are six books in this series set in the fictional town of Starbridge, England and dealing with the changes that took place in the Church of England from the 1930's to the 1960's.  Each novel, with one exception, is narrated by a different Anglican cleric who has risen high in the Church of England but is now encountering a troubling period in his life. 

In Mystical Paths for example the narrator is Nicholas Darrow who is training for the priesthood.  Nicholas is the son of Father Jonathan Darrow who is featured prominently in books one and two of the series.  Nicholas like his father has psychic abilities which his father has warned him to be careful with.  But Nicholas decides to perform a seance as a way to help his friend Katie Aysgarth get over the drowning death of her husband Christian.

Katie feels guilt about Christian's death due to the fact that she feels he committed suicide.  But the seance only makes matters worse for Katie and so Nicholas as a way to repair the mess with the seance decides to investigate what really happened to Christian.  Was it an accident or suicide?  Nicholas hopes he can prove it was an accident and bring Katie some closure.   

Getting to the truth will be difficult and Nicholas Darrow becomes an amateur detective as he talks with Christian's friends and family to find out what really happened and why.  Nicholas also talks with Christian's father, Dr. Neville Aysgarth, the retired Dean at Starbridge.  We learn a great deal about Neville Aysgarth's younger years in book three of the Starbridge series and he's a man with issues.  But in Mystical Paths Dr. Aysgarth is now much older and he shares with Nicholas the concerns he had about his son Christian:   

“This is the truth, Nicholas; this is the truth your father and I worked out together: Christian was sick. It was a spiritual sickness. It arose because he’d turned away from God after his mother died and he’d never filled the vacuum satisfactorily. Of course there are many admirable people in this world who don’t believe in God and yet lead moral, meaningful lives, but they’ve succeeded in filling the spiritual vacuum with sound humanist principles. For a long time I assumed Christian had done that, but in the end I began to wonder and then I started to worry" 

I have only one book left to read in the Starbridge series and I will be sorry to see it come to a close.  These novels can be read out of sequence but it's best to read them in order because the characters carry over from one book to the next.  So if you are curious I would start with book one, Glittering Images.  You may find the series is not for you but if you get hooked you have a very enjoyable reading experience ahead.