Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Paula Hawkins’ latest? Unfortunately, it’s all wet
In “Into the Water,” Paula Hawkins’ eagerly anticipated follow-up to her much-buzzed-about debut, “The Girl on the Train,” girls and women both have the misfortune of jumping, being pushed or simply wading to their deaths in a patch of river called the Drowning Pool. They’re part of a grim trend rooted in the 17th century, when 14-year-old Libby Seeton was punished here by drowning for “cajoling” a “poor, blameless” married man into “unnatural acts.”
Is there some kind of curse hanging over the fairer sex in the northern England town of Beckford, where even a pregnant cat gets tossed into the river? Or are these tragedies a terrible outgrowth of the mistreatment from which women suffer in this closed-off community? “This is a deathly place,” wrote Danielle “Nel” Abbott in a book she was working on about the Drowning Pool before becoming one of its victims. “The water, dark and glassy, hides what lies beneath.”
It would be nice to report that readers who feasted on the tingly hidden truths and dizzying plot twists of “The Girl on the Train” have more of those pleasures in store for them in “Into the Water.” It would also be nice to report that Hawkins has something profound to say about the persecuted women whose “blood and bile” have “infected” the river. But, alas, Hawkins’ sophomore effort disappoints on all counts.
Like a washing machine stuck in spin cycle, without the sudsy emotion that would give it pulp appeal, “Into the Water” goes over and over the same ground for nearly 400 pages, tossing its large cast of narrators together to confusing effect. “Seriously, how is anyone supposed to keep track of all the bodies around here?” poses Erin, a female cop who provides the book’s only flashes of humor.
Nel, a single mother, left behind a gloomy and aggrieved 15-year-old daughter, Lena, whose best friend, Katie, perished in the Drowning Pool a few months before Nel. Katie was seemingly well-adjusted and worry-free (“she swanned into adolescence,” her mother, Louise, reflects). But she had had a falling out with Lena relating to a secret Katie was harboring.
To Lena’s disgruntlement, Nel’s estranged younger sister, Jules, returns to Beckford, having fled its dark threat to take care of her niece. When Jules was 13, she was sexually assaulted by her sister’s studly blond boyfriend Robbie, who thought he was doing this “fat, ugly and uncool” girl (her description) a favor. She never told, and he never faced charges.
More recently, a married schoolteacher, Mark Henderson, has been messing around with a 15-year-old female student. He dreams of “a clean slate, a blank sheet, an unblemished history,” and the way things go in Beckford, he may get his wish. Like much else in the book, though, his case is handled in rather cursory fashion. He’s a symbol more than a real antagonist.
“Into the Water” introduces numerous clues to possible homicides, including a necklace and a bottle of diet pills, but mostly uses them to stoke false leads. There’s also a psychic no one pays any mind to, including the reader, called Nickie Sage. For all of the book’s eerie trappings, Hawkins fails to capture the dark powers the Drowning Pool is said to have. Like many other elements in this overcooked, underachieving novel, it’s one-dimensional.