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    Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Girl on the Train: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #20
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Girl on the Train: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #20
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Girl on the Train: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #20
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Girl on the Train: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #20

    By Kathryn Cope

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    About this ebook

    No reading group should be without this companion guide to Paula Hawkins's compelling thriller, The Girl on the Train. A comprehensive guide to this New York Times bestseller, this discussion aid includes all the information you need to get your book club discussion up and running: thought-provoking discussion questions; literary context; an author biography; a plot synopsis; exploration of themes & imagery; character analysis; recommended further reading and even a quick quiz.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKathryn Cope
    Release dateFeb 27, 2018
    ISBN9781386212164
    Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Girl on the Train: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #20
    Author

    Kathryn Cope

    Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

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      Book preview

      Study Guide for Book Clubs - Kathryn Cope

      Introduction

      There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective and ideally there will be heated debate.

      A surprising number of book club members, however, report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even though their group loved the particular book they were discussing, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group discussions to fall flat. Most book groups only meet once a month and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

      Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for book clubs. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography section provides useful background information which may be interesting to share with your group at the beginning of your meeting. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you may find it helpful to refer to the ‘Themes & Imagery’, ‘Literary Style’ and ‘Character’ sections.

      A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire if you need to recap on the finer points of the plot. There is also a quick quiz - a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you particularly enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of books similar in style or subject matter.

      Be warned, this guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have read the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

      Kathryn Cope, 2015

      Why Read The Girl on the Train?

      The premise behind The Girl on the Train is simple but brilliant. What if a London commuter, accustomed to staring at the same view through the train window each day, unexpectedly witnesses something shocking? And what if it becomes clear that the sighting is directly related to the mysterious disappearance of a young woman?

      Paula Hawkins makes this idea more interesting still by creating an unreliable narrator. Rachel, the commuter in question, is far from a dispassionate observer of events. Each day, she distracts herself from looking at number 23, Blenheim Road, when she passes it (her old home, where her ex-husband now lives with his new wife) and focuses instead on number 15. This property belongs to a perfect looking couple who Rachel daydreams about and names ‘Jess and Jason’. Rachel’s emotional investment in the lives of Jess and Jason means that when she sees Jess (aka Megan Hipwell) kissing a man who is not her husband she feels shocked and betrayed. Her confusion grows when, a few days later, it emerges that Megan has suspiciously vanished and that her husband appears to be the number one suspect. Rachel’s determination to solve the mystery of Megan’s disappearance is brilliantly muddied by her fragile emotional state, lack of objectivity and alcohol induced blackouts.

      Lauded as the new Gone Girl, this intelligent psychological thriller focuses on the dark side of human nature and provides great material for book group discussion. As it is written through the alternating perspectives of three complex and troubled women, readers will vary tremendously in their reactions to the characters. The plot also raises some uncomfortable questions for readers to mull over: When does marital disharmony cross into the territory of domestic violence? When does a ‘drinker’ become a ‘drunk’? And is it possible, or even desirable, for us ever to truly know one another?

      Paula Hawkins

      Paula Hawkins is forty-two years old and was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She moved to London with her family when she was seventeen and has lived there ever since. After studying Economics, Politics and Philosophy at Oxford University, Hawkins became a journalist, specialising in business and finance and writing for a variety of publications, including The Times.

      Her career as a fiction writer began with the publication of Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista, a romantic comedy about a woman who loses her job in the recession, written under the pen name Amy Silver. Three further Amy Silver novels followed but Hawkins became increasingly aware that ‘chick lit’ was not her natural genre. An admirer of literary thriller writers Kate Atkinson and Gillian Flynn and the classic psychological thriller The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Hawkins realised that she should concentrate on darker subject matter in her own fiction.

      The Girl on the Train marked Hawkins’s debut into the territory of the psychological thriller, inspired by her own experience of commuting into London for years. When Hawkins’s literary agent sent the still half-finished novel out to publishers, a bidding war erupted as editors spotted the potential of The Girl on the Train to become the hot new psychological thriller. As predicted, the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success, soaring to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list and being quickly optioned by Dreamworks for a film adaptation.

      Plot Synopsis

      The novel begins with an unknown narrator describing the whereabouts of a female body. We learn that ‘she’ is buried near old train tracks and the grave is marked with a pile of stones.

      The perspective switches to the narrative of someone who is confused and afraid. They are dimly aware of the presence of another person, who blames the narrator for something they have done.

      5 July 2013

      As she travels on the 8.04 train from Ashbury to London, Rachel Watson notices a pile of clothes at the side of the railway tracks. On the evening train home, she drinks the first of several gin and tonics. As it is Friday, Rachel anticipates a lonely weekend on her own.

      8

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