The Girl on the British Train

Now that we have all had a chance to calm down again after the Ryder Cup, we can reflect on another potential wobble for the special relationship - that entente cordiale that we are happy to claim as a warm entanglement with America [and which probably goes over America’s head most of the time].

The Girl on the Train is an extraordinarily successful novel by Paula Hawkins, which has more recently been made into a film by Tate Taylor. Paula was born and brought up in Zimbabwe. She moved to London in 1989 and has stayed there ever since. She wrote her book about a British girl commuting into London Euston. Tate is American and, with the author’s blessing, he made his film of the book in an American setting, in which the trains run instead into New York. He employed a British actress, Emily Blunt, to take the leading role.

Paula’s decision to give carte blanche to the film makers apparently caused mild strops of indignation in some quarters on this side of the Atlantic over the contrasts between a commuter journey into London and one into New York. It was along the lines that the juxtaposition of the railway and the suburban landscape is different in some respects. I can’t see how this would seriously affect one’s enjoyment of the film, even if one had previously read the book.

My wife read the book and then passed it on to her friends with glowing recommendations. She by-passed me for consideration as we rarely share our books of choice. My ears pricked up only because it had the word “train” in the title. If it had been The Girl on the Bus, it would no doubt have passed me by completely.

Paula can surely do what she wants with her own book. Britain and America are very different in many respects, some aspects of the built environment included. However, The Girl on the Train is just a story and it could probably be adapted quite adequately to any metropolitan commuter system in the world. The decision to transfer it to the United States was no doubt commercial, pure and simple. There are so many important issues we could and should be getting worked up about on both sides of the ocean but this is not one of them.

However, I did notice that in the frontispiece, Paula described the permanent way as “train tracks” rather than “railway tracks,” which suggests to me that she might have had a leaning towards the United States before she even wrote page one. On the other hand, maybe I’m just an old pedant.