REVIEW: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
“‘What are you thinking, Amy? The question I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?'”
Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what did really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war.
Dear Ms. Flynn,
Truly, there is no justice in the world. Your book Gone Girl should be the best-selling work of fiction in the nation. But, no, the three books keeping you from that slot all have the word “Grey” in the title. And that is a damn shame because your book is a tour de force of plot, writing, humor, character, and hell-hath no fury like a lover scorned rage. From the moment I began reading it, all I longed to do was see how the tale turned out. (Not now, honey, I’m reading.)
Gone Girl is the story of Nick and Amy whose marriage, like many, is full of lies, malice, sex, betrayal, love, and two bedazzlingly different sides of a story. I was utterly seduced by the middle of the first chapter. It is the morning of their fifth anniversary and Nick, not a happy camper, walks down to the kitchen to find Amy making crepes.
I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her yellow-butter hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a jump-rope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip, humming around it. She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics. When we were first dating, a Genesis song came on the radio: “She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah.” And Amy crooned instead, “She takes my hat and puts it on the top shelf.” When I asked her why she’d ever think her lyrics were remotely, possibly, vaguely right, she told me she always thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she put his hat on the top shelf. I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.
There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.
Amy peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my arms, she would smell like berries and powdered sugar.
When she spied me lurking there in grubby boxers, my hair in full Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Well, hello, handsome.”
Bile and dread inched up my throat. I thought to myself: Okay, go.
Hours later, when Nick is at work, a neighbor calls and says the Dunnes’ front door is open, their only-indoor cat is on the stoop, and something just doesn’t look right. When Nick gets home, not only is the door open in a “wide-gaping-ominous” way, the living room is trashed, the iron still on, and Amy has vanished.
Nick, like the reader, knows when a man’s wife goes missing, the husband is usually to blame. And, for much of this book, it seems eminently possible Nick did indeed murder his bride. Nick, narrating his side of the story, admits to choices that, hey, look hellaciously awful. When he met Amy, she was beautiful, extraordinarily charming, and very rich. Over the past five years, though, things for Nick and Amy have changed drastically. Amy, though still beautiful, isn’t the least bit charming to Nick (or so he says), and she’s lost all her lovely money. Nick moved them back to his hometown of North Carthage, Missouri, a place Amy detests (or so he says), borrowed the last of Amy’s money to start a bar with his twin sister Margo–everyone calls her Go–, whom Amy dislikes (or so he says), and began to hate his wife for her constant belittling and general nastiness (or so he says.)
Amy, the missing Amy, tells her side of the story through a diary whose first entry, on January 8, 2005–more than seven years ago–is about the night she met Nick.
Tra and la! I am smiling a big adopted-orphan smile as I write this. I am embarrassed at how happy I am, like some Technicolor comic of a teenage girl talking on the phone with my hair in a ponytail, the bubble above my head saying: I met a boy!
But I did. This is a technical, empirical truth. I met a boy, a great, gorgeous dude, a funny, cool-ass guy.
When they met, Amy and Nick were both employed as writers. Nick wrote about culture for a magazine, Amy wrote personality quizzes for women’s magazines. And while neither are currently employed in their chosen field, they are still writers; fabulous, manipulative, creative authors, each competing to tell the story of their relationship. The book alters between Nick narrating what (or so he says) is happening in real-time–his chapters are titled The Day of, One Day Gone, Two Days Gone, etc…–and Amy narrating what happened in the past (or so she says), in chronological order via her diary.
Both Amy and Nick are liars. Nick favors lies of elision; Amy is the mistress of misdirection. Each is convincing, neither is believable–this is a book that doesn’t truly resolve its mysteries until the very last pages. And yet. Amy and Nick are also lovers. They loved one another when they met and it’s fair to say each is the other’s raison d’être. For the Dunnes, that thin line between love and hate is more like a continent.
This book is the sort I want to wave at other people exhorting them “READ THIS.” I found it to be addictive in the way the best stories are. Part of its impressive charm is all the shockers it drops–there’s no way I can write much about the novel without giving away the best parts. I’m serious–were I to enumerate all the spoilers lying in wait to ensnare lucky reader, I’d have inches and inches of whited out text. So, I’m not going there. With the exception of saying some readers may find the last few chapters rushed and/or may be disgruntled by the ending, I’ll write no more about the plot or about what happens to Nick and Amy.
I am willing, however, to pull my reviewer lens back and pontificate on this book’s vision of romantic love. I promise to be brief. In most romance novels, intimacy is the treasured goal. No matter what the era, men and women find their bliss when they know and are known for who they truly are. But, in the “real” world, intimacy is more fraught. As lovers grow closer, they become less the people they want to seem and more the people they actually are. Sometimes this is marvelous. Sometimes it creates utter ruination. Many times, it’s just hard and couples get through it. We are a flexible species–always adapting to meet our needs–and we recalibrate our views and expectations of that someone we’ve chosen to love. In Gone Girl, Amy’s and Nick’s ultimate goal is to show the reader the real person the other is. Their narratives are subtle, angry, and revealing; the relationship the two share is as intimate as any I’ve ever read.
When I read this book, I found myself agreeing with both Nick and Amy. The pulse of their anger worked for me. More than once, I found myself saying “Hell Yeah.” And then I’d realized I’d been manipulated. Take this bit where Amy, in her diary, writes about the perfect girlfriend. I am going to treat it as a spoiler simply because it’s a later entry in Amy’s diary. If you are the sort who doesn’t want even a hint of what’s to come, skip this bit.
[spoiler]Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men—friends, coworkers, strangers—giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much—no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version—maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)[/spoiler]
Here Amy (so she says) is sharing her anger with you, the reader, about the unfair deal women get stuck with these days. And I’m reading it and I’m thinking “Yes! Right on sister!” until I remember oh, this is Amy and it’s a bad plan to believe a word she (or Nick) says. I need to remember who I am and not get sucked into someone else’s bent world view. That I needed to do this is just one piece of what makes Gone Girl such a great read. Not only are Amy and Nick convincing–they are compelling and alarmingly alluring. Even now, that I’m done with their story, I’m still thinking about them, wondering what really happened, wishing I had just one or two more insights into their whacked-out world… it’s such a fascinating place.
So, if you are looking for an antidote to conventional romance, if you long for a love story gone wonderfully wrong, read Gone Girl. It’s a work of deceptive genius–Nick and Amy and their adroit, delusive narratives will stay with you after you’ve finished their tale. In fact, if you’re like me, you’ll be reading the book a second time, marveling at all the things you missed. I give it a B+.
~Dabney
I didn’t get halfway through this review before I went out and bought it. This sounds *amazing*. Thanks so much for the fantastic recommendation!
I’m waiting for this at my library but honestly I may just need to buy it. Not sure if I can hold out.
This is a beautifully written book, really gorgeous. And it’s interesting and thrilling. But damn if those two characters aren’t the least likable people in the world. It’s hard to go into detail without spoiling, but I found it really hard to read about two such unlikable people.
I adored this book so much. It swallowed me when I was reading it – and it left me feeling, eh, slimed and somewhat depressed for about a day after I finished it. That isn’t to criticize the book in the least — simply to say, it was a riveting read, and I felt held hostage by the two narrators’ descent into darkness. I’m planning to re-read it soon (book club pick!) and I’m curious to see how the experience changes when I’m prepared for all the twists and turns that made reading it for the first time feel like such a wild ride.
Anyway, thanks for this review, Dabney! It manages to capture the power of the book without revealing any spoilers, which must have been a ridiculously tricky feat to pull off.
Curious to know, Dabney, this review is really glowing and between this one and Anderson Cooper’s comments, I want to read it. It sound awesome. Why the B+? I don’t see many reservations in here or problems listed.
I agree – totally awesome book.
And the ending!!!!!!
I won’t spoil it either but like Meredith I came out totally horrified and in shock. It certainly doesn’t tie everything up into a neat and justified bow, I’ll say that.
I heard this will be made into a movie which deserves 1000 times the talk of “But who is going to play Christian?”
I just started this book last night! It’s terrific so far. I love the voice.
This is a brilliant book, but like Wendy above, I found both Amy and Nick simply loathesome. Which is actually a credit to the author-writing a compelling story about vile individuals.
Great review! I added this to my wish list – I don’t normally read about characters that I end up hating, but this sounds so compelling.
@Wendy: It’s funny. I found them to be awful but not necessarily unlikable.
@Dani Alexander: I felt the resolution was rushed.
@Meredith: Thanks!
I seem to be really tuned in to your preferences, Dabney, and I guess that means spending over my ebook limit. I hope to be suitably shocked and horrified.
What a great review. This book wasn’t on my radar are all but I’m going to trot off to buy it, both because you’ve intrigued me with your review and because of the quality of the excerpts. Thanks!
@sarah Mayberry: It’s not for the faint of heart or for those looking for hearts and daisies in their romances. It’s dark and horribly clear about the downside of creating a persona for the one you love.
And, it’s beautifully written and so deftly plotted I was reminded of the wallop I felt reading “Presumed Innocent” two and a half decades ago.
@Karenmc: I hated paying 13 bucks for an e-book, but, in this case, I think it was worth it.
Have you read Tana French? I’m salivating for her latest Irish mystery. She’s another I pony up the big bucks for!
http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Harbor-Novel-Tana-French/dp/0670023655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343093285&sr=8-1&keywords=tana+french+broken+harbor
@Dabney: No, I haven’t, but I’ve been making little toe-dips into genres other than my beloved historicals of late. I think I’m ready to alternate my choices some. I’ll put Tana French on my TB Discovered ist.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever read such a well written and compelling review! Nicely done. I’d heard about this on last weekend’s Book Report (radio show) and the audio snippet was intriguing. After reading your review, I’m just going to have to buy it! I must be honest, I’m not usually one for audiobooks, but the narration in the excerpt played, was great.
Btw, for more book reviews, author interviews and all things book-lovers enjoy, why not tune into the weekly radio show ? It is a fun, fast moving show with great content. See bookreportradio {dot} com for broadcast details and the lineup.
@Karenmc: You don’t have to read them in order, but they’re all great. There are four–the fourth just came out yesterday!
@Sally: Thanks for the kind words!
this sounds amazing, sold!
@Dabney:
Normally I avoid the book everyone is talking about like mice avoid cats, but your review was compelling so I added myself to the (long) hold list at the library.
@Dabney: I’ll probably start with In the Woods because I’m pretty anal about books in a series.
Also, I started Gone Girl last night; right away, I wasn’t missing that $12.99:)
@Karenmc: “The Woods” is good although the ending irked some. How are you liking “Gone Girl”?
I went out and bought this book based on the review, and was completely riveted from start to finish. I must admit I have a love-hate relationship with books like these (similar to the two main characters, maybe?) because on one hand the book is wonderfully written, the story is enthralling, and I literally could not put it down (note to self: don’t read the Kindle while making dinner). On the other hand–the characters are both utterly unlikeable to me (Amy more than Nick), and the world they inhabit is a dark, cynical, loveless place. I would hate to live in that world, and in all honesty, I don’t like reading about it… BUT the book had me in its grip all the same.
@Dabney: @Dabney: So far, so unsettling :)
I bought this book and read it last night on the basis of this review. You are right that it is addictive – I couldn’t put it down! I had picked it up in the bookstore and looked at it a few times, but I generally dislike violent books and I thought it was another one of those grisly murder mysteries. Luckily, I found that the book has very little actual violence. The blood and gore happens off screen, as it were, and is a little too campy to be taken seriously. It is interesting that the author used to be an Entertainment Weekly reporter because I though the book is a great mash-up of films like Double Jeopardy, Fatal Attraction, and Basic Instinct. Not to give anything away, but certain scenes could have been ripped straight out of a 30s film noir by Raymond Chandler too. Creepy luxury mansion, check. Obsession with flowers, check.
I didn’t really see this as a straight up mystery, so the ending worked for me and did not feel rushed. I loved the ambiguous ending – it just seemed to fit the book because ultimately it is about marriage, not murder.
Also, this book is hilarious!
You nearly sold me. Until I decided to take a peek at the spoiler. Right there you and the book lost me. Whether Amy is lying or not doesn’t matter. It is precisely this sort of American gender-war prose and commonplaces for which I have no tolerance at all and which has me break out in nasty allergic hives.
Thanks for the spoiler! It saved me the expense.
I finished the book and truly was sucked in by the “happy couple” and their views of marriage, loyalty and emotional intimacy. What struck me hard was this: decades back, I read all of the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee books. McGee was a self-aware, ironic white knight, rescuing relatively innocent victims from con artists, sadistic boyfriends, merciless grifters, greedy relatives, etc. There is no equivalent to McGee in Gone Girl, no moral anchor to which the reader can attach. Granted, two supporting characters create some balance, but because it is Nick and Amy who narrate the tale, we’re on our own.
This is what I’m pondering now. What does it mean that the story is told by the characters who used to be the sludge at the bottom of the stream?
@Karenmc: I think that lack of moral compass is part of much of mainstream literature. For me, a book, movie, or TV show has to have someone in it I care about but not necessarily someone I like. As odd as it felt, I did care about how things turned out for Nick. He is a scummy guy but I didn’t think he deserved what he got and I found myself rooting for him.
@Dabney: No, Nick didn’t deserve the battering he took, so I’ll amend my statement to say that only one character was really sludge:)
I just finished this book tonight and immediately started googling for people’s reactions. Personally, I loved the book and I even loved the ending, although many people may disagree. Without revealing too much let me just say that I found it believable which is a nice change from what I normally see in fiction. And it proved the character to be who I thought (him/her) to be.
I also have to say that my mind was completely BLOWN when I started the second part!
This book blew my freaking mind away but the ending… made me go WTF?! but in a way it set the tone of the entire story- warped and disturbing.
@Sarah: @KT Grant: She’s quite the warped story teller! If you liked that book, you might try Denise Mina’s Deception. It’s another really well written book with a very unreliable narrator describing his marriage as his wife sits in jail for murder.
@Meredith:
That’s hilarious, I felt “slimed” and depressed, too! I don’t feel like the characters were actually that unlikeable, like the above comment- I think what I found hard was that their actions (lying, manipulation, murder maybe?….) made them obviously unlikeable, but that their wit and intelligence made them more appealing, like I wanted a closer seat to the activities going on in their brain…
@Jennifer Lohmann: @Meredith: @Sabra:
I usually avoid any books, tv shows, youtube videos, etc, that people recommend, but I thought I’d take a chance on this one that my mom and dad recommended- and believe me, it is well worth it!!
At the end I kept thinking: Hercule Poirot would have nailed Amy! Maybe I’m looking for a neat, tidy ending, but I can’t think Amy was that meticulous in her planning that the cops couldn’t have found some errors in her stories! I just thought that her tales were just brushed aside and explained away too readily by the police, especially when it involved a death.
Did anyone else think Amy was psycho in this book, I mean she undoubtedly was, and brilliant at the same time, but I hated her at the end, I didn’t like the ending at all, Anyone else agree?
Amy Elliot Dunne is the female Hannibal Lecter psycho creepy… The pages are pulsing wildly at every turn… The ending is twisted and perfect for me…
could not put the book down . Am I obtuse? Didn’t get the last chapter. Help.
Carefully wrapped present left on the bed? No, it was hidden in the closet. Got about as much errors as Gone Girl had ;)
The ending of this book is absolutely awful and completely unworthy of the rest of the story. If you are waiting for it at your library, don’t rush out to buy it. It’s a wild ride and worth reading, but I think a B+ is a rather generous grade for this book. It’s like Flynn had this amazing story and she was weaving it with such magic and then suddenly got bored with it and simply dropped it on the ground. I think a C is a more accurate grade.
@dabney Great review agree that the ending was a bit of a let down . Reviewing it today at book club –
My description of this book was “very disturbing”.
And regarding the “end”: I have listened to it several times. It is the reason I find pleasure with this book: Based on some very few words, presented at the very end.
This novel can be highly recommended, but it needs a bit of time to fully appreciate.
Agree that it is riveting and could not put it down. Also agree that the ending was kind of a downer but I get what the author did (I think). I was just SO hoping that psycho b….. would get what was coming to her.
This book is a major let down. Not only are the characters flat and loathingly annoying with their constant “woa is me” attitude, it was throttled with obvious clichés and plot was unconvincing as a thriller/mystery book. I was really looking forward to reading this based on reviews…definitely not the book for me.
The prose was spot on. The characters believeable….until the end. I see what the author was trying to do, and it was simply: give the ending a new look when compared to what the reader expects. It didn’t go with the rest of the story and was really a bit of a let down. It made Amy and Nick exactly what they were, characters in a fictional story because it would never happen in real life.
I gave up after 35 pages, I could not get into it and really disliked the characters. After all the glowing reviews I was quite disappointed.
Why did I waste time reading this book? The answer is I don’t know and I wish I hadn’t. I think the author didn’t plan it properly, lost her way while writing and got bored deciding in the end to finish it as quickly as she could, why else would it have such a poor excuse of an ending? Maybe I expect more from a novel than others who have left comments here, but I don’t like being taken for an idiot. From the sudden revelation that Nick was having an affair (how convenient) thereby allowing the story to move onto a next phase, to numerous anomalies in Amy’s growing catalogue of ridiculous lies which forced the story to go in an obvious direction and conclude that both characters were as mad as each other. If you think a sadistic psycho like Amy who focused her whole life on her contempt for those around her who intelligent as her or not did not wish to hurt her in any way could a) fool the experts she would have had to interview her, and b) fooled her family and her husband to the point he wanted her at all you have to be joking. By the way, sperm doesn’t remain live that long and in tissues?…..please. This book is absolute rubbish!!!!
I really enjoyed your review. I completely agree, it’s a fantastic book! I’m doing the same and reading the novel a second time so that I can see what I missed first-time round and how it all fits together now I know the ending.
If you’re at all interested, I’ve just written a review on the book myself ( http://www.dogearedreads.wordpress.com ) and now I’m reading around others’ reviews to see their thoughts in comparison to mine. It seems the majority of people love this book.
Amelia
LOVED this book. I am divorced (we’re now friends), and I saw a little of me and a little of my ex-wife in these characters, could certainly relate to many of the marital frustrations (not nearly to the extreme of this novel). There is so much truth in this novel with respect to what some of us do to each other in relationships (again, not to the extreme–I hope–as in this novel). HIGHLY recommend this book.
I was totally taken by the book…could not put it down!! However, I was completely disappointed with the ending. I felt like it either needed to go on a little more or should have ended sooner as the last couple of chapters seemed to loose steam. A sequel would be good to tie up loose ends!!
I loved the book until the end! HATED the end!! Ruined the whole book for me! I really hope when they make movie they change the end! I would not recommend
This book!