The Sunday Mail
Andrew Moyo
FORMER Arundel School student, Paula Hawkins, is Zimbabwe’s biggest export when it comes to literary achievements, thanks to the success of her 2015 bestselling novel “The Girl on the Train”.
The novel, which debuted at number one on The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2015 list, remaining in the top position for 13 consecutive weeks, catapulted her to instant stardom.
The book has since sold over 20 million copies worldwide and it was also adopted into a film that stars Emily Blunt, which was released late last year.
The London based writer has returned with yet another thrilling masterpiece, “Into the Water”, which was released two weeks ago. At the beginning of the year, this book was billed as one of the novels to look out for in 2017 and I made it a point to look it up as soon as it came out.
In this novel, a single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town, the same fate that a vulnerable teenager met earlier in the summer. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
The single mother leaves behind a lonely 15-year-old short tempered girl, who finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she ran from, a place she vowed to never return.
From the beginning of the text, I had a feeling that I was in for a thrilling ride with the writer creating a disturbing and horrific scene where some men violently murder a young girl by drowning her. “She wants to go back to a home that no longer exists, to a time when she and her aunt sat in front of the fire and told stories to one another. She wants to be in her bed in their cottage, she wants to be little again, to breathe in wood smoke and rose and the sweet warmth of her aunt’s skin. ‘Please.’ She sinks. By the time they drag her out the second time, her lips are the blue of a bruise, and her breath is gone for good.”
While it is hard to establish if this incident is in the present or past, it effectively raises the readers’ curiosity, prompting them to dig deeper into the text for answers.
Despite the writer’s interesting approach of telling her story from the perspectives of various characters, this element almost derailed my interest, but then patience prevailed and at the end of the day it is safe to say I was not disappointed at all.
The style she employs in this book might, however, prove to be a challenge to readers who prefer less complication as it might be difficult to keep up with all the characters in the book. However, the story is captivating. The writer will be forced to continue turning the pages so as to uncover the mystery behind the deaths in the river.
The twists and turns are not limited to a certain period as you will have scenarios that stretch to as far back as 1679.
While it has proven difficult for some writers to reproduce the punches they brought with them on their debut novels, Hawkins in her experimental way is still on the right path.
We will only have to wait and see if “Into the Water” will also manage to reach the 20 million mark in terms of sales, or if it also gets adopted for the big screen.
