Paula Hawkins is the high priestess of Grip Lit — a genre born out of protagonist Amy Dunne’s psycho machinations in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl . Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train — about the sad, alcoholic loser Rachel and the things she might have seen and done — sold more than 18 million copies since its release in January 2015. The British author’s second book, Into the Water , was released on May 2 and looks set to occupy the top of bestseller lists for some time.
Talking of the pressure of following up on The Girl on the Train ’s success, Hawkins says, “Well, it is mostly self-inflicted (laughs). There is the added pressure of my readers waiting for the second novel. I don’t think about it. I just try and tell the story the best way I can.” While The Girl on the Train was set in an urban milieu, the latest goes the rural route — set in the small English town of Beckford, with a scary river that has been the scene of drownings, suicides and murders. “I chose a gothic atmosphere; the setting depends on the sort of story you are saying,” she shares.
Gothic take
On the phone from London, the 44-year-old talks of the two main themes of Into the Water . “The main one was family and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and what happens with our reliance on memory. The other was our relationship with water. We usually have good associations — of swimming, having fun. But I wanted to explore the bad — the phobias, memories and myths.”
Interested in exploring the many ways ordinary lives go wrong, the book has three women at its centre: Nel, a journalist with an obsession with the town’s history; Jules, her sister who returns in the wake of a tragedy; and Lena, her secretive teenaged daughter. Much like its predecessor, Into the Water has a surfeit of unreliable narrators, too — there are 11 voices, none of whom can be trusted. “There are versions of the truth. Subjective perceptions don’t necessarily coincide. We all make up stories to some degree at different times. People prefer to avoid the negative in their versions of reality,” says the finance journalist of 15 years, who wrote romantic comedies under a pseudonym, before making it big as a novelist. And in these days of fake news, the unreliable narrator has a scary resonance. “It is incredibly relevant. People prefer to read and believe that which confirms what they already know, rather than the truth, which might be unpalatable.”
Feminist narrative
Hawkins, who reads books by Kate Atkinson, Pat Barker and Margaret Atwood — though she doesn’t find much time when she is writing — admits she doesn’t “do heroes and heroines”. Her books are peopled by quite a few unlikeable characters. “I prefer relatable characters, which are more realistic,” she explains. So it isn’t a coincidence that the fortune-teller Nickie, Nel Abbot and the victims of the drownings in Beckford, all “the troublesome women”, feel like versions of the ‘Mad Woman in the Attic’? “That is an interesting analogy,” says Hawkins, adding, “Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is presented as this violently-insane villain of the piece. However, when you think of her story, she is a poor woman who was dragged from her home in Jamaica, married off to Edward Rochester who disliked her and locked up in the attic in Thornfield Hall for 10 years. You realise she is a victim more than a villain.”
As someone who describes herself and her books as feminist — the novel digs into the town’s deep-seated misogyny and the ‘violence that girls internalise towards their bodies’ — body image is one of the themes. Jules was fat as a child, Katie takes slimming pills and there is mention of girls who will do anything for “the thigh gap.” “As one grows, the body changes from something you use to climb, run and play to something that is looked at. That informs the way we look at ourselves and contributes to poor self-image.” It also explores how much we actually know the people we are closest to, our family, parents and children. “That is a great sadness for parents, who realise they do not actually know their child.”
On the dark side
Hawkins enjoys crime fiction because she “likes to see the way people behave when confronted with extreme situations”. On why there are so many women writing thrillers and crime fiction, she says, “From a young age, we are told to avoid becoming a victim. We are told not to dress in a certain way, walk in a certain place, be out at a certain time. We have a slightly different relationship to crime, as we are conditioned that way — even though men have as much or even more of a chance of becoming victims to crime.”
While the film rights to Into the Water have been bought by DreamWorks Pictures, the company that produced The Girl on the Train , there are plans for her to executive-produce the big screen version. Saying that she is happier writing fiction than non-fiction, Hawkins concludes, “I have a few ideas for my next book, but isn’t it a little too soon to be thinking about that now?”
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