Narrative Unreliability in Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train as a Strategy of Reader Immersion

This paper considers the narratological phenomenon of unreliable narration in the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, concentrating on mechanisms of reader perception. Starting with a survey of the main contemporary definitions of unreliable narration as well as sources of unreliability, the article moves to the problem of how unreliable narration can influence a reader of the analysed text, discussing ways in which unreliability combines with other aspects of the narrative. The effect of unreliable narration on the reader is examined in terms of recipient immersion. The disclosure of unreliable statments, the search for truth hidden beneath the cover of narration, along with the recuperation of the “reliability” of the narrator are viewed as supplementary objects of the reader’s interest during text perception. Attention is focused on two components of reader gratification as manifest in Hawkins’ novel: intellectual satisfaction due to the solution of the murder mystery (temporal immersion), as well as satisfaction resulting from the protagonist’s psychic recovery and revenge (emotional immersion). The last section of the paper compares the reader’s perception of the novel with the viewer’s reactions to a screen version directed by Tate Taylor.