Skip to main content

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins (Book Review)





Book Review: Into the Water
Author: Paula Hawkins


Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

I should state that I haven't read the phenomenal book (so as it is claimed) "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins which is her debut novel. Rather absentmindedly I grabbed her second book "Into the Water" and I must say once again I was skeptical about it in the beginning but gradually through and over the latter part of the book, I was glad that I had pickup up this one. 

The horrors conjured up by the mind are always so much worse than what is.

Nel Abbot is dead. She went over the cliff into the drowning pool leaving a daughter, Lena, back in the mortal world.Following the unexplained death of her sister, Nel Abbot, Jules Abbott returns to Beckford, a town in Northumberland, to take care of her niece, Lena. Now Jules has been dragged back to the one place she never ever dreamt of returning, the last thing on her mind was to face back the horrors of her past. She is afraid of her long-buried memories. Somewhere she also couldn't digest the fact that Nel committed suicide. She believed, contradicting many, that Nel was pushed to death, contradicting the evidence too. Lena's best friend Katie too had jumped to death from the same cliff into the drowning pool. The river in question holds many secret mysteries even dating a century back. The drowning pool hold secrets that could destroy many lives of the town.

Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women.

 As a reader the only major negative aspect of the book is the complicated narrative which is told in eleven different view points from eleven different character, some are in first person narrative, while the others in third person. But once you get hold of the plot and get around yourself into the confusing narrative, the rest is a pleasant read. The other negative aspect is that the author almost spends the first one-third of the book developing her characters and the mystery around them. At one point readers can lose focus as to what the plot was getting into with eleven characters spreading out their current as well as back-story. There was a point where I had trouble keeping track of who's who, what's what and why's why.
 
The horrors conjured up by the mind are always so much worse than what is.

The characters and their skeletons in the closets are the main takeaways of this book. Each character is developed in a way showing the grey sides where everyone of them is with-holding secrets which makes the novel worthwhile. The reveal of secrets is well explained and brilliantly plotted where the author toys with the reader's perception of the characters. It was quite predictable towards the end but that's not what disappointed the readers at most. The biggest disappointment was the abruptness to reveal the final blow which wasn't given proper explanation as to why. A confession always comes with why. The 'why' here is not the why one commits a crime but why one confesses. And this is what is kept unexplained or even if the author expected the readers to thread the bolts themselves the she provided far less convincing ideas to support it and reach the conclusion.
 
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.

Into the water is a good book in parts. The narrative is complex but yet brilliant. The journey of reading the book, engulfing oneself into the dark mysteries is what this book should be read for. The climax is the weakest link and one should expect less towards the end.

A two and a half stars for Into the Water
★★1/2 


- The Fiction Freak

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: Legend of Suheldev

  Book Review: Legend of Suheldev Author: Amish Tripathi & The Immortal Writers’ Centre   “Darkness does not win because it is strong. It wins because the lamps stop fighting.” Before we get on with the review let me start by stating that this book was not written exclusively by Amish Tripathi. According to the forward provided by him, in his own words, “ I cannot write faster than a book every one-and-a-half to two years. And at that pace, I will die before I write down all the story ideas that Lord Shiva has already blessed me with. Hence, the idea of a Writers’ Centre. It was a suggestion from my team, and it made eminent sense to me. I work with a team of writers, to whom I relate the complete story, and the research material to be read. They then write the first draft, which I then work upon. So the genesis of the story and the final writing is done by me, while the team writes the first draft.” Amish Tripathi is one of the famous Indian author who had penned ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept - Paulo Coelho

  Book Review: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept Author: Paulo Coelho   “Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots keeping itself alive.”   Whenever you read a Paulo Coelho book, you seem to open a door to mysticism that takes your soul for a spiritual ride. Coelho has the dexterity of making the simplest of stories into magical tales. The Alchemist author has written some brilliant books and "By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept" is one such.   “We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”   Pilar, the narrator, fell in love when she was just a girl of seventeen. Her lover, at that time, had left to explore the world. Pilar led a life of eleven years where she developed a charisma of never expecting anything from any men. Her hollow lif...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: The Talisman

Book Review: The Talisman Authors: Stephen king & Peter Straub  “You don’t own a thing unless you can give it up, what does it profit a man, it profits him nothing."  Reviewing a King novel is a very amusing task. Both the authors have such great finesse in writing supernatural horror that when they team up, something amazing is bound to be produced. The Talisman is one such instance. Stephen King and Peter Straub collaborate to produce a thrilling ride for the readers with an engaging plot and out of the ordinary narrative. "He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility.” The plot revolves around Jack Sawyer, a twelve year old boy, son of a yesteryear heartthrob actress of B-movies, also known as the "Queen of the B Movies". Jack begins a journey, an extraordinary trip out from Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire with the only aim to save his mother, who is dyin...
Post a Comment
Read more