Pun Salad

Leant to me by one of Mrs. Salad's co-workers. Very kind of her. It's a suspense novel. I'll try to avoid spoilers.

The protagonist and main narrator is Rachel. She's a mess: divorced, alcoholic, compulsive liar, a whiner, and overweight. And also recently unemployed! Can't imagine why.

But in order to deceive her compassionate landlord, and also to fill up her empty life, she takes the train into London on weekdays. She peers out the window into the backyard of a cozy couple, who she names "Jess" and "Jason". She makes up an entire fantasy about them. They happen to live just a few doors down where Rachel used to live with ex-hubby Tom, who now shares the house with new wife Anna. Dickensian!

But then a number of unsettling things happen: Rachel witnesses behavior that's completely at odds with her idyllic notions of Jess and Jason. She gets blackout drunk one Saturday night, and can't remember what happened the day after, but she's wounded and filthy. And the news is filled with stories of an apparent lurid crime!

It's very much a page-turner. I figured out whodunit quite a while before the shocking revelation is made, but that's OK.

They made it into a movie, starring Emily Blunt as Rachel. It's hard to see how it could be bad, but the critical consensus is… it's bad. I might watch it anyway; Lisa Kudrow is in it, playing "Martha", someone I'm pretty sure is not in the book.