The Girl on the Train: List 5

by Paula Hawkins
Despite losing her job, Rachel continues riding the commuter train every day—and becomes increasingly involved in the lives of the people she observes through the train window.

This list covers Anna: August 14, 2013 – Rachel: September 10, 2013 in the 2015 edition published by the Penguin Group.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 35 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. frisson
    an almost pleasurable sensation of fright
    It gives me a little frisson even now, walking past that house—butterflies suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a smile comes to my lips and colour to my cheeks.
  2. impenetrable
    impossible to understand
    The workings of other people’s families are always so impenetrable.
  3. situation
    a complex or critical or unusual difficulty
    So why am I wondering now whether that was true? It’s this house, this situation, all the things that have been going on here—they’re making me doubt myself, doubt us.
  4. snoop
    watch, observe, or inquire secretly
    I’m doing the things she did: drinking alone and snooping on him.
  5. culprit
    someone or something responsible for harm or wrongdoing
    I spot the culprit immediately: a framed picture, smashed, with a piece of glass missing from the top, the exposed edge smeared with my blood.
  6. strain
    difficulty that causes worry or emotional tension
    You’ve been lying to him, telling him you were a friend of his wife’s, you’ve been telling all sorts of stories and—let me finish—this is a person who, at best, is under a great deal of strain and is extremely distressed. At best. At worst, he might be dangerous.
  7. tally
    be compatible, similar or consistent
    I go upstairs and sit on the bed and think about the conversation I had with Andy, the fact that it tallies with what I remember.
  8. assume
    take to be the case or to be true
    I got into a taxi, I assume, or back onto the train.
  9. basis
    the fundamental assumptions from which something is begun
    I was an idiot to think that I had a chance with him again, just on the basis of one conversation, a few moments that I took for tenderness and that were probably nothing more than sentimentality and guilt.
  10. reconcile
    make compatible with
    And the thing with the golf club, that hole in the plaster, grey and blank like a blinded eye trained on me every time I passed it, and I couldn’t reconcile the violence that he talked about with the fear that I remembered.
  11. volunteer
    tell on one's own accord
    After a while I learned not to ask what I had done, or to argue when he volunteered the information, because I didn’t want to know the details, I didn’t want to hear the worst of it, the things I said and did when I was like that, filthy, stinking drunk.
  12. contemplate
    consider as a possibility
    How could he even contemplate being with her again?
  13. disentangle
    free from involvement
    People you have a history with, they won’t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can’t disentangle yourself, can’t set yourself free.
  14. corrosive
    capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action
    There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.
  15. incriminating
    charging or suggestive of guilt or blame
    I’ve found no incriminating emails, no sordid pictures or passionate letters.
  16. relieved
    made easier to bear
    I’m relieved because now I can’t know, but I’m also relieved because a dead phone suggests an unused phone, an unwanted phone, not the phone of a man involved in a passionate affair.
  17. explicit
    precisely and clearly expressed or readily observable
    There’s nothing else: no declarations of love, no explicit suggestions.
  18. correlate
    bear a reciprocal or mutual relation
    Still. I get my harassment log from the bedside table and look at the calls, comparing them with the meetings arranged on the phone. Some of them coincide. Some calls are a day or two before, some a day or two after. Some don’t correlate at all.
  19. blunder
    make one's way clumsily or blindly
    It’s as though I’d been blundering about in the dark for days, weeks, months, then finally caught hold of something.
  20. coalesce
    fuse or cause to come together
    Shifting shadows started at last to coalesce, and after a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could see.
  21. hysterical
    marked by excessive or uncontrollable emotion
    I know it isn’t true because he told me how disappointed and embarrassed he was that I’d accused Clara of flirting with him, that I’d been hysterical and abusive.
  22. stale
    lacking freshness, palatability, or showing deterioration
    So when I closed my eyes, when I drifted into a half dream and found myself in that underpass, I may have been able to feel the cold and smell the rank, stale air, I may have been able to see a figure walking towards me, spitting rage, fist raised, but it wasn’t true.
  23. disbelief
    doubt about the truth of something
    It’s a Sunday service, the first train isn’t for half an hour, so there’s nothing to do but sit there on a bench, going round and round, from disbelief to desperation and back again.
  24. scenario
    a postulated sequence of possible events
    I’d inserted the image of Anna, walking away from me in her blue dress, into another scenario: Tom and a woman getting into a car.
  25. earnest
    characterized by a firm, sincere belief in one's opinions
    She has this earnest look on her face, as though she’s concerned about me.
  26. companionable
    suggestive of friendship or amity; friendly
    I make the coffee and we sit side by side on the patio in silence that feels almost companionable.
  27. resent
    feel bitter or indignant about
    If anything, seeing her like this, calm, concerned, sober, I’m starting to see what she once was and I resent her more, because I’m starting to see what he must have seen in her.
  28. unbearable
    incapable of being put up with
    The thought that she and I—fat, sad Rachel and I—are now in the same boat is unbearable.
  29. determined
    characterized by great firmness of purpose
    She lets me cry for a while and then she says in a clear, determined voice, “Anna, I think we should go. I think you should pack some things, for you and Evie, and then we should go. You can come to my place for now. Until . . . until we sort all this out.”
  30. muffle
    deaden (a sound or noise), especially by wrapping
    He’s saying something to me but I can’t hear, it’s as though we’re under water, the sound muffled, reaching me in blurry waves.
  31. euphoria
    a feeling of great elation
    “I saw you,” I say at last, and I feel euphoria, fleeting but unmistakable, when I say the words out loud.
  32. rubbish
    nonsensical talk or writing
    Don’t listen to her, she’s talking absolute rubbish.
  33. waver
    pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness
    Anna’s wavering, I can see it—the way she’s looking at him, searching his face for the truth, his eyes intently on hers.
  34. facsimile
    an exact copy or reproduction
    In this utterly bizarre facsimile of reality, I feel as though I could just politely bid them both good-bye, walk across the room and out into the safety of the street.
  35. mock
    treat with contempt
    I can hear the magpies—they’re laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling.
  36. register
    enter into someone's consciousness
    But I was good to you. I took care of you,” he says, and it’s only then that it really registers: he lies to himself the way he lies to me.
  37. appease
    cause to be more favorably inclined; gain the good will of
    Anna laughs, too, and I can’t tell whether she finds it funny or whether she’s trying to appease him.
  38. excruciating
    extremely painful
    The pain in my head is excruciating as I bump along the floor, and I feel a wave of nausea come over me.
  39. stupor
    a state of being half-awake
    I need to bring myself out of this stupor, I can’t afford to be weak.
  40. bereft
    lacking or deprived of something
    I think about that, and the way he used to be—the way they used to be, the way I imagined them to be—and I feel bereft.
Created on Wed Mar 02 13:04:10 EST 2016 (updated Wed Sep 26 09:33:53 EDT 2018)

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