The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I often think about the gadget from Men in Black that erases peoples’ memories. How terrible would it be for that to get into villainous hands? Erasing the memory of your crimes is almost as good as having a ring of Gyges!
Except it’s not that good. It won’t work for all crimes. For instance, if you steal somebody’s car and erase their memory of the theft, what good does it do you? There’s auto loan paperwork and receipts for oil changes. The dealership is going to keep sending them letters about recalls. Worst of all, the DMV has everything on file, and they talk to the police.
The world contains so many traces of that human-car relationship. Your disruption of that relationship is going to get detected, no matter who forgets about it.
For most crimes, the memory gadget only gives some tangential or provisional immunity. It could be one element in a villain’s strategy. But not for emotional abuse. For emotional abuse, it would cover up and erase the whole crime. Submerge it.
The Men in Black memory gadget is, of course, a symbol for gaslighting. And that’s why you can see its shadow falling on every page of The Girl On the Train.
This is a detective novel with the virtues of the unreliable narrator technique. The unreliable sleuth.
In another novel, I would consider it a failing for a major plot point to hang on the protagonist’s memory. It would be a form of deus ex machina. If the sleuth had the solution all along, but had forgotten it, it’s a problem. It means their victory has nothing to do with the rest of the plot of the book.
But The Girl On the Train is exactly about the protagonist’s memory. It’s about the gaslighting. The plot is to confront the loss of memory.
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