An alternative view on the story

I just finished reading the book and about to watch the movie and I'm hoping to not be disappointed, as often happens when a novel sets such high expectations. So here's my take on it.

While obviously non lineal, the whole time I was reading, I had this feeling that Rachel was both Anna and Megan. The people she watched while on the train were figments of an imagination that had become so real in the depths of her depression, her drunken stupor and downfall due to the abuse and loss she encountered in her life.

Anna was the woman she would be if her child had survived.
Megan was the woman she once was.

Both Scott and Tom were abusive. These men didn't change in either depiction of herself. She was somehow bound to the abuse due to her desperation to be loved, to be a wife, a mother, to be 'normal'.

Here are a couple things (amongst many) that brings me to this conclusion:

- The clothes Rachael encounters by the train line - the blue dress with the belt. In Anna's perspective of the night that Rachel was run down by a car or hit off the road, Rachael was wearing these clothes. It's never fully explained why she's naked when she arrives home that night, completely naked, battered and bruised. It's pinned down to a blackout - while all the other detail is recalled, the no clothes scenario isn't.

- When Rachael first visits Scott's house, she's perplexed by the how exact it is to 'her' house. Without looking, she knows where everything is. She repeats this on several occasions - that she's been there before. Perhaps feeling that way because it's her only reality.

After really thinking about it, I began to wonder - is Rachael even alive?

I was convinced that the story would end ambiguously and when it didn't, I felt a pang of disappointment, but now looking back at it, it all makes sense to me. Tom's death was her liberating herself and coming to terms with loss. Megan's death was symbolic of that part of herself gone for good. Anna comes to realise that Tom was bad for her when she dug the cork screw deep into his neck and comes through for Rachael - symbolic of Rachael coming to terms of leaving escaping his emotional and physical abuse - the hold he had on her the whole time.