The Girl on the Train: how Paula Hawkins wrote ‘the new Gone Girl’ | Books | The Guardian

The Girl on the Train has had a dizzying rise, and among all the so-called domestic noir books that are now excitedly talked about as the new Gone Girls, it may be the closest thing. Or at least the sales are (in fact, it is outpacing Gillian Flynn's mega-seller). It has sold more than 120,000 copies in hardback since January, and sales of ebooks and copies in other countries are at around 2m. The US market has taken to it especially - the book has been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for 13 weeks, and the film rights have been bought by DreamWorks.

She must now be making an astonishing amount of money - more, she admits, than she ever thought she could make from writing. Has it changed her? "My life is exactly the same as it was before, although I'm aware that I'm more solvent," she says. "1'm going to have some things done to my house which have been desperately needed. I may move and get myself a bigger place, but I haven't gone crazy." Otherwise, nothing much has changed. Even successful writers are afforded anonymity, she points out, and nobody looks at us when we meet in a cafe near her home in south London, our conversation drowned out by the occasional passing police car.