Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water – A Review

Into the Water is Paula Hawkins’ much awaited second novel. Following the huge success of The Girl on the Train, the second book did very well in terms of sales and Paula Hawkins was left with the uphill task of meeting huge expectations. Unlike the simple yet captivating first book which had three narrators and was limited to a locality, this new book brought within its ambit an entire town with a whopping 11. This book is based in Beckford, a small town with a river flowing through. A river whose waters have been troubled by many drownings and suicides, allegedly of ‘troublesome women’. It refers to a seventeenth century drowning of a young girl on suspicion of being a witch. And over the centuries many followed Libbie’s trail.

The story starts with the death of Nel Abbott by drowning in the pool. Views differ about the cause of the death. For Nel’s daughter Lena it is suicide, while for Nel’s sister Jules it cannot be suicide, Nel was not the kind to give up. Jules revisits her estranged relationship with her sister, a difficult growing up. In her trails, she discovers that Nel was writing a book about the drownings and this has earned her quite a few enemies. In fact Lena’s best friend Katie drowned a few months back and Katie’s mother in no unclear words blamed Nel and her obsession with the pool for it.

Jules remembers her own troubled childhood and how Nel was never there for her. But Nel’s obsession with the river was very much present then also. And in her quest Nel comes across dark secrets about the town which should have been left alone. She discovers about women who defied norms, who deviated in their own ways and paid a price for it. Nel herself is someone who did not fit into the popular notion of good women. A single mother whose involvement with someone in the town raised many eyebrows. In a way the reader might be left feeling that Nel fitted into the kind of women who were lost to the river.

The tale is creepy as well as gripping, but the reader is at times confused with so many characters confessing albeit half heartedly. As if even in confession they are keeping secrets from themselves. The storyline was not as slick as the first book. Here the reader feels that the truth is already out there but just kept eluding us. The gripping mystery at times kept loosening because of the muddled narrative. Nonetheless it overcomes the obscurity with flying colours owing to Hawkins’ fabulous linguistic performance. It is no doubt an excellent addition to the genre of psychological thrillers. None those of us who were captivated by The Girl on the Train will be left awaiting Hawkins to recreate something similar if not better.