What lies beneath
If a sharply written and swiftly paced final chapter with a startling reveal compensates for the time you spend reading a cluttered, slow-moving thriller, you may walk away satisfied with Paula Hawkins’ “Into the Water.”
But if, before the tale peaks, you want a narrative with focus, brisk pacing and evocative writing, “Into the Water” will let you down. The book follows Hawkins’ debut bestseller, “The Girl on the Train,” and it’s a disappointment.
Hawkins builds her story around the death of single mother Nel Abbott. A photographer and a writer, Abbott drowned in a pool formed at the bend of a river. Was her death a suicide, or was she murdered? And was it just coincidental that Abbott’s death followed another recent drowning in the same spot of a teenage girl?
Abbott’s photographs and writings suggest that she was obsessed with suicide. Before she died, Abbott was at work on a book, “The Drowning Pool,” that detailed the drownings of many women in this pool over the centuries. Excerpts from the manuscript offer some of “Into the Water’s” more evocative writing. The river, Nel writes, “cuts like steel through the soft Cheviot Hills” and it’s “a deathly place. The water, dark and glassy, hides what lies beneath: weeds to entangle you, to drag you down; jagged rocks to slice through flesh. Above looms the grey slate cliff: a dare, a provocation.”
Unfortunately, this image of the haunting spot is about as far as Hawkins gets in establishing an atmospheric sense of place, so essential to a thriller. Further description to bring to life the fictional northern England village of Beckford is scant.
And the dark lure of the water Hawkins tells of suggests a theme never fully realized. Her attention, instead, follows the entangled lives of villagers in whose closets hang enough skeletons for the New Orleans and New York City Halloween parades combined.
Among the most haunted characters is Nel’s sister Jules. Although the two were estranged after an ugly incident that happened when they were teenagers, Jules returns home determined to learn what caused Nel’s death. Jules speaks to her dead sister in a series of anguished monologues that soon become repetitious and trying.
Jules must also deal with Nel’s surviving teenage daughter, Lena. Angry, rebellious and resentful of Jules, Lena is convinced her mother committed suicide after they quarreled.
Hawkins fleshes out her story by trailing a full slate of villagers. Among them is Sean Townsend, the police investigator who works on the case, in which his wife and father have strong interest. There’s also Nikki, the village psychic, convinced she knows what happened over the years in the river. And there’s Mark Henderson, a teacher too responsive to the advances of his underage female students.
Against these unevenly drawn characters, Erin Morgan, an inspector transferred from London to the village, stands out for her force, candor and keen eye. Her crisp scenes make one wish Hawkins had put Morgan at the center of what could have been a sharp police procedural. (You also can’t help feeling that Nel could have been the most fascinating character in the book if she hadn’t drowned by the first chapter.)
Hawkins tells the story from rotating points of view, a popular narrative structure in thrillers that’s wearing thin. The idea, of course, is for the characters to undercut each other’s stories so the reader can’t tell who is trustworthy. An inherent problem with this approach — and one Hawkins doesn’t surmount — is the redundancy that occurs when details and events are told, then told again, and again, from different points of view. The reader soon begins to feel he’s in a long holding pattern.
The reveals come, eventually, in the final third. Some are surprising, others predictable and melodramatic. The penultimate chapter, though, pulses with an excitement that flows into the writing and charges up the pace as the story peaks with a one-two punch. Hawkins lands the final blow with impeccable timing. There’s a mastery of storytelling here that leaves you hoping that Hawkins gets back on the mark next time out.