Tag Archives: The Girl on the Train

Give It To Me Straight – Fates and Furies (Part 1/3)

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Then, play it again.

Fates and furiesReaders of Fates and Furies find a big story of modern marriage and relationship wrapped between the covers of this National Book Award Finalist. Lauren Groff’s novel offers a wealth of literary resources with her creative reinvention of structure, style and character. This three part analysis begins with storytelling and structure.

The Straight Line – Sequential Plot

Lancelot, nicknamed Lotto, tells his story for the first half of the book, almost two hundred pages in this four hundred page novel. In The Detroit Free Press  published interview, Lauren Groff  refers to her story as a tale of privilege. Let me count the ways that Lotto is privileged. First, he has fortune when he needs it and choses to surrender his fortune for his desires. Second, he has success. Maybe he was lucky or worked hard. Or maybe he fits the description of privilege – well educated, wealthy, male and white. Third, characters surround him, offer support and champion his cause – especially his wife. These factors propel Lotto’s story to the forefront and the first half of the book.

The point of view begins omniscient as the reader sees the first married union of Lotto and Mathilde – lest it be thought that the entire story is about Lotto. From there, the point of view shifts to a deep third in Lotto’s point of view. His story dips back to his birth with a clever device of repeating a story told many times to him. Time moves forward with Lotto’s perceptions dominating the story of his friends, his dreams and his marriage to mystery woman, Mathilde.

The Jagged Line – Fractured Plot

Mathilde, the wife, encourages readers to identify with her rage. Let me count the ways that Mathilde is angry. First, as a child, she is blamed for a deadly mean streak, shamed and never forgiven. Her survival depends on distant relatives who have no concern for her wellbeing. Second, egotistical and pretentious Lotto is the best part of her life, and without him, she is the devastated widow – her education and hard work unraveled without her center, her husband. Third, Mathilde believes she is “the interesting one.” Mathilde’s past is an example of the writer pushing a character to the outer limits of believability. Themes of inequality thread through the novel. In Lotto’s point of view, he blindly accepts Mathilde’s lack of family and friends. Mathilde’s half of the novel, another two hundred pages, tells her scrambled tragic version of her life story.

Mathilde’s narration alternates between her angry widow world and chapters revealing her  past and the formation of her values and beliefs. Mathilde selectively takes the reader through her childhood slowly opening the doors to understand her motives. Mathilde’s mean streak dots every chapter for the reader. Her only softness comes for the man she marries, and he is not spared from her passive aggressive ways.

Play It Again – Story Arc

Throw the traditional story arc in the trash for this novel except that Lotto’s half of the book is fairly traditional. Mathilde’s point of view jumps back in time and returns to her widowed agony almost like a zigzag across a graph of time. Unlike parallel plots, this story challenges even the most ambitious of screenwriter. For example, The Girl on the Train uses multiple points of view, slowly revealing a suspenseful and complicated plot arc. And hence, bestseller becomes screenplay and film. Some stories succeed with repetition – a retry of the same idea like the “back to square one” game – as used in the movie, Groundhog Day, and new Sci-fi film, Edge of Tomorrow; Live, Die, Repeat. Each repetition moves the story one step further.

Groff’s repetition, however, drills beneath what the reader assumed was the true story. For every major event in Lotto’s life, the reader now sees the hand of Mathilde. Her callous placement of an obituary notice punishes Lotto for his abandonment. She deliberately denies Lotto the children he wants. And Mathilde leverages everything to make her husband and his plays successful. In Mathilde’s story, vengefulness and anger are ever present – from the bruising of a teasing schoolmate to the personal and financial destruction of Lotto’s best friend.

In her interview, Groff states she planned to publish the two stories separately. The two halves together form a rich comparison in structure, style and character. The next post “It’s Greek To Me” will examine Groff’s style and literary references. After that, a third post will explore character and the human psychology of relationship and attraction. As seen in structure, marriage “For Better or For Worse” is a risky endeavor.

 

Paula Picked a Plighted Path of Parallel Plots

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KarensSeveral chapters into Paula Hawkins’ best seller The Girl on the Train, I note the thriller’s structure of three character point of view with parallel plots. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, by David Shafer, which I also read in the fall, follows the same three character parallel plot. Although the point of view and plot structure are similar, these two books are vastly different.

Shafer begins his novel in Mandalay, Myanmar which I recently toured via tablet, the safest way to sightsee an exotic setting with movie backdrop potential. Location organizes the three equally-weighted plots and is shown at the beginning of each chapter. After round one of each of the points of view, the reader knows which location indicates which character. Portland is Leo. Mandalay begins Leila’s story. New York is Mark’s departure point.

Ansen Dibell, author of Plot, identifies this structure as a braided plot where the “pace, tone and color” of each plot blends and adds to a deeper and richer whole. Shafer’s novel is also a tandem narrative according to Linda Aronson because each of the stories presents a linear progression in time. Although the plots begin separately, a convergence occurs three times: Mark and Leila meeting at Heathrow Airport, Leila escorting Leo from Whispering Pines Rehab, and Leila and Leo rescuing Mark from a motivational speaking gig gone bad. Elizabeth Sims appropriately calls this a swallowtail plot because the convergence and interaction of the characters continues for a significant portion of the story.

The characters in Shafer’s novel are unique and humorous. A Goodreads review describes my favorite character Leo as the “unhinged trustafarian.” He’s a trust fund baby and Harvard graduate who works at a daycare. The problem with having a favorite is I don’t want to read the other plots in this dark comedy, such as Mark, the “phony self betterment guru.” And yawn, I skim the chapters on the too serious, Leila, “disillusioned non-profit worker.” The balance of each characters lows and highs keeps the overall novel’s pace clicking along with plot and subplot.

For something completely different, Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train shows Dibell’s mirrored pattern of plots. The three women are connected as opposites, and at other times, as complements in emotion, life stages, themes and imagery. Each chapter in the story begins with a character’s name, day of the week, date and time of day. In the first chapter, the main protagonist, Rachel, travels morning and evening for five days on the train. The story’s motion feels like commuting, stopping, starting and sharing an awkward space with the same faces going the same way at the same time each day. The reader learns of Rachel’s alcoholic behaviors, cheers her sobriety and dreads what will come of her next drinking binge and her calls to ex-husband, Tom.

As for Rachel, her plot and Megan’s are true parallels in a geometric sense and never intersect. These two plots and points of view alternate for the first third of the book before Anna’s point of view presents. Anna intersects with Rachel and with Megan but at different time periods–one in the present and one in the past. Hawkin’s story illustrates what Aronson calls a fractured tandem, current time for Rachel and Anna but a past time frame for Megan. Aronson identifies this parallel plot structure as good for “unexpected, often tragic connections between disparate people.” That sentence pretty much sums up the book for me.

The technique of parallel plots is a time tested convention. Contemporary writers borrow from 16th century Shakespeare who copied from first century Greek philosopher, Plutarch. In “King Lear,” Shakespeare mirrors plot and subplot to intensify the drama. Both The Girl on the Train and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot benefit from the intricate weaving of plots and mirroring of characters.

Tags: parallel plots, writers craft, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, David Shafer, Linda Aronson, Ansen Dibell, Elizabeth Sims, Shakespeare, “King Lear”