Paula Hawkins is the author of The Girl on the Train.From a Q & A with Alex Clark for the Guardian:
Your debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, has just beaten a record held by Dan Brown by spending 20 weeks in a row at the top of the bestsellers chart. How do you feel?--Marshal Zeringue
It’s great to break a record. It’s also, though, a slightly artificial thing, isn’t it? I’m not even sure when those records began, and from an author’s point of view, that’s not the most important thing.
Having worked as a financial journalist, you borrowed money from your family to support yourself while you wrote the book, which must have given it an extra edge?
Yes. If this didn’t work I was either going to have to go back to being a journalist or come up with something completely new to do. It was the last chance.
The story revolves around what Rachel, whose life has more or less fallen apart, sees from the 8.04 at the start of the day and the 17.56 at the end. We get glimpses of London life, but this is not a city novel, is it?
No, it’s more suburban than metropolitan. It felt right to me that...[read on]