‘Woman in Cabin 10’ fails to leave the dock

By Arbogast, Brandon, November 2, 2016

By Liz Reichart// A&E Editor

I’ve never subjected myself to the inevitable horror of taking a cruise vacation. The thought of lounging in the sun on a deck with a good read is indeed appealing; however, the sense of confinement that comes with being sequestered on a vessel at sea, vulnerable to the salty elements and whatever diseases make their home in the boat’s crannies are enough to make me stay on land for good. It’s enough to make me break out into a cold sweat every time I comes across one those plastic-wrapped over-saturated Caribbean Cruise line commercials.

It is fear too that drives me to read: the fear of falling in love with flawed characters only to witness their intimate hopes devastated; the fear of getting wrapped up in a world with a finite page limit. It is no surprise then that fear was what inclined me to pick up “The Woman in Cabin 10” by Ruth Ware, an ambiguous murder mystery involving an alcoholic depressive heroine, a cast of wealthy, quirky characters, and yes, cruise travel.

Ware’s debut novel, “In a Dark, Dark Wood”, was a New York Times Bestseller in addition to being named one of NPR’s top books of 2015. This psychological crime thriller put Ware on the map and poised her for a second breakthrough work in the same genre. “The Woman in Cabin 10” tells the story of Laura “Lo” Blacklock, a young journalist for a London-based travel magazine with few ideas for her eventual professional or personal trajectory. That’s when Lo is given the chance that would upgrade her writing career to first class – a week reviewing a luxury Scandinavian cruise line with media, pop culture, and financial elites. What ensues is a week of hell for Lo; it turns out boarding in cabin nine, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Having not read Ware’s first work, I was surprised to find that the book reads at a middle school level. There’s deft turn of phrase, no greater metaphors to be found. It’s a flat novel that is a quick read for anyone looking to simply pass some time in an airport terminal. Despite the brevity of the novel, the plot seems to moves at the pace of molasses, mostly because of Lo’s incapability to understand what is going on. What the plot lacks in pace, it more than makes up for in frustration.

Passengers of the boat each had their quirks, but their development halted abruptly at surface level. The book had no exploration of character, and the level of trite at which they operate felt as if the entire lineup had marched out of some standardized Clue board game. The famous media mogul who also has a catty side, the ruggedly handsome photographer who just came to play with the big kids, and the head of the cabin staff who runs the ship perhaps a little too tightly were all tropes we’re familiar with from perhaps every murder mystery that has ever been written. We are thrown heaps of details about these people, their resumes, their appearances, but we don’t get any insight into their desires, motivations, or fears. Thus, Lo, in contrast a character with much depth, spends time onboard floating through a cast of cardboard cutouts.

Upon experiencing Lo’s plight aboard the Aurora Borealis, it seemed Rachel Watson, the protagonist of “The Girl on the Train” was a natural comparison. Both flawed heroines, the two spend a majority of their novels trying to make sense of a drunken haze and confound expectations other players have of them. For Rachel, this is the police, her ex-husband, and a recent widower, all of whom Paula Hawkins does an excellent job of giving us real insight into. Meanwhile, we learn about Lo’s depressive past and abuse of alcohol, but only in fleeting moments told through cliches without self-examination. Perhaps this is what makes “The Girl on the Train” an eerily similar but clearly superior book in its content matter and execution. “The Girl on the Train” offers perspectives from a range of a female characters around which the novel circulates, and gives us the character study that makes a thriller novel gripping; critical readers invested in interplaying motivations and their backstories. But Ware only gives us the facade of this in what seems like 140 characters or less. Whereas Hawkins’ 360 degree personalities jump off the page, triggering contemplations of isolation, betrayal, and appearance versus reality, Ware’s figures are content to stay within the confines text and leave the reader gasping for fresh air.

Furthermore, having read “The Woman in Cabin 10” in straight succession after “The Girl on the Train,” the differences between the two make me sad for what “The Woman in Cabin 10” could have been. Even the title structure and the covers of the two novels are eerily similar. The fact that Ware’s novel was published a year and a half after the smash success of “The Girl on the Train” has me wondering if Ware was desperate to claw her way into a similar type of smash thriller hit that would resonate with the same audience (from what I’ve discerned, that audience is mostly upper-middle class women ages 18-45). Considering the pressure that publishing houses put on authors to create box office successes in their novels, it’s likely.

Disappointingly, “The Woman in Cabin 10” features a flawed heroine who is not unique or empowering in any way. This isn’t a question of relatability, because judging characters on whether or not they’re relatable is like judging the quality of a cruise vacation before you’ve ever embarked on one: admittedly unfair. However, the novel itself that Lo contributes to doesn’t illuminate anything about wealth, stature, or humanity, all three of which Ware could have taken a large bite out of. I wish that she had tackled some of these greater issues, made her characters warped and engaging, and ultimately, created a work that wasn’t just another inevitable shout into the thrillers-for-moms void.