A conversation with the woman who has successfully “Hitchcocked” Gone Girl.
by Kaylen Ralph
When Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl came out in 2012, it quickly collected a dedicated following of book clubbers and thrill seekers. When the movie came out this past fall, it seemed like the chilling tale of a picture-perfect marriage gone yellow was all anyone could talk about. It generated such a cult following that it seemed to be elevating the psychological thriller genre as a whole. It did for me, at least.
The Girl on the Train landed in my mailbox shortly after I saw Gone Girl in theaters. With an upcoming vacation in mind, I decided to hold out on cracking the galley until I was lying on the beach. I finished the book in one day and couldn’t wait to pick the brain of the mastermind in charge of the book I still can’t stop thinking about. The Girl on the Train is British author Paula Hawkin’s first book, and it’s already been optioned for the big screen by Dreamworks. Its dual setting of train car and London suburb has a Hitchcock cinematic quality.
I talked to Hawkins about her background as a journalist (a financial journalist, at that) and whether she thinks this is the golden age for psychological thrillers by women.
Kaylen Ralph: You started out in journalism and that you worked for quite some time as a journalist and I was wondering what, if anything, from your journalistic career, informs or inspires your work as a writer of fiction?
Paula Hawkins: I’m not sure that it informs what I do, particularly, but I think being a journalist taught me discipline. I’m quite organized in the way I work, I work well to deadlines, that kind of thing. So, I think from a practical point of view, a background in journalism is a really good thing to have because it just means that you’re used to getting on with things and working on your own and sitting in a room and writing on your own, without necessarily having someone standing over you. But in terms of subject matter, it hasn’t had a great impact, but I do think it’s a good discipline.
KR: So you never covered crime when you were working?
PH: No, I was a financial journalist. I wasn’t doing anything quite so exciting as the crime beat or anything like that. It was quite dry.
KR: So why choose to write a thriller as your first book?
PH: Well, these are the kind of books that I enjoy reading. I’m really interested in, not necessarily crime itself, but in the impact that crime might have on victims, victim’s families, the people who commit them, the social impact—that sort of thing. So, it’s an area that I find fascinating.
KR: Definitely. I feel like humans as a group have always demonstrated a general preoccupation with crime, you know the saying, “Whatever bleeds, leads,” if we’re talking about journalism. Do you think that’s an inherent aspect of our human condition or do you think we’re really just seeking that kind of thrill, whether it be from a real-life crime story or the next great nail-biter such as your excellent book?
PH: I’m not sure that it’s inherent but it certainly seems to be a feature of that thrill seeking. I also think there’s probably an element of…reading these things like cautionary tales…[or] experiencing the things we actually fear without having to go through the suffering, to looking at these things from the outside because…particularly in books that deal with crimes that are quite everyday, they’re not about serial killers, they are about the threats that are closer to home, and there’s something very interesting about that, about experiencing what might be. The kind of book I’m doing, it’s a very commonplace situation, it’s suburban London or it could easily be suburban anywhere else. It’s about crimes that happen in communities that we recognize.
KR: And I think that your book does a really great job of, when you’re reading it, you get caught up in this story…and you think about these characters and…you’re almost tricking yourself while you’re at it, because it is this small suburban town. You walk a really great line—kind of playing with our perception of the story and with what we notice in our day-to-day lives.
PH: And I think the characters, although some of them behave in extraordinary ways, they’re not that far from people we might know or have traits that we might recognize, like if that person were to slide a little bit farther in that direction you could see them start to behave in these sorts of ways. They’re maybe slightly more extreme versions but they’re people that many of us may recognize.
KR: What authors do you admire and/or look up to professionally? Was there any author or book that particularly inspired you writing this book?
PH: I don’t think there was anything that inspired me particularly in writing this book, but it has a certain feeling to it, a Hitchcock feel. I enjoy reading a lot of psychological thrillers, people like Megan Abbott and Harriet Lane. I really love all of Gillian Flynn’s books, I think they’re fantastic. Cara Hoffman, too. So there are a lot of women writing in this kind of area. I’m also a huge fan of Kate Atkinson…she writes literary and crime fiction and she’s one of my favorites. So I don’t think there was anyone I was reading in particular that inspired this book, but that tends to be the area I’ve been reading in lately.
KR: I’m really glad you brought up all female writers because as I was preparing for our interview and looking into psychological thrillers in general, as of late, in order to get beyond the Gone Girl comparison, which I know you’ve been getting a lot, and I was wondering if you think we’re kind of entering a golden age of thrillers by women, or do you think that women have always had a stake in the genre overall. I was thinking way back to Agatha Christie…
PH: I think the crime thriller genre has always had really strong female voices…there are a lot of voices in this area, but I think you’re also right, that at the moment, there seems to be a golden age, and it’s not just Gillian (Flynn). It’s people like A.S.A. Harrison (and her) book The Silent Wife, (which) was another really incredible piece of writing; Harriet Lane wrote Alys Always…it’s fantastic. So I think there are an awful lot of women writing in the genre now, and I don’t know whether there’s a particular reason.
KR: I’m not sure, either. It’s interesting timing with the #readwomen2014 this past year, but I don’t know that if in that short of a period of time, what we’re consuming could influence the kind of content being produced. I just think it’s interesting…
PH: I think there might be a tendency for women to focus on more realist crime that is more in touch with our actual experiences rather than writing about serial killers or spies. I’m not denigrating that kind of writing, but there do seem to be a lot of female voices in this particular field, which is what I would call slightly more realistic crime scenarios, the way crime actually happens to people, which does tend to be…most people are killed by someone they know, it does tend to be domestically focused. I seem to have been drawn to female writers of the genre, but that might just be the voices I’ve been interested in lately.
KR: Another question under the same thought…thinking back to Gone Girl because it’s such a recent release, do you think that successful thrillers by women necessitate an attractive younger woman in the role of victim or criminal mastermind? Do you think that’s a necessary plot device?
PH: I don’t think so. It might have been something that we’re used to seeing but I hope that’s not necessary. I’m always thrilled when I see books with characters who aren’t just young women, a great variety of voices and not just in terms of age; I suppose we also need to be looking for diversity in other areas as well.
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Kaylen is one of The Riveter’s co-founders and the EIC. She moved to Minneapolis, MN after graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism in August 2013. In addition to her editorial duties at The Riveter, Kaylen also works as a freelance researcher for The Sager Group. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @kaylenralph.
