Gone Girl

I don't often read outside of my comfort zone. I love science fiction and I love fantasy and not much else holds my interest. Every once and a while though I'll take a risk and venture outside my safety bubble. GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn was recommended to me with infectious enthusiasm. It wasn't my usual cup of tea but the premise was perplexing and so I decided to give it a shot. WOW, I am so glad I did not let this one pass me by.

On the morning of Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary she goes missing. As the investigation gets rolling evidence leads the police and the public to suspect the obvious: it's always the husband. There is more to the story than Nick Dunne will let on but does that necessarily mean he is to blame for the disappearance of his wife?

It's always the husband. Right? Maybe not...GONE GIRL is the best sort of book. This is the sort of novel that will challenge your preconceived notions. This is the sort of novel that will absorb you fully and not let you go until you flip the final page. Even then you are bound to continue mulling it over in your head. This is the sort of book that dominates your conscious, whether you're at work or school or whatever it is you people do. I don't take time to reflect on books as I read them. I just don't have the luxury. With GONE GIRL I was pausing every fifty pages or so to contemplate what it was that I had read. And even then I finished it in a few sittings. I got this book on a Tuesday and had finished it by Thursday night. At 400 pages and given the concerns of daily life that is no small feat.

So what makes GONE GIRL such an addictive book? For starters it is incredibly well written. From start to finish, GONE GIRL is a nearly flawless psychological thriller. The book is told from two perspectives, Nick and Amy's. Nick's POV picks up the day Amy goes missing and continues on with the investigation. Amy's POV is past-tense, told in the form of diary entries leading up to the disappearance. For the entirety of the novel Nick maintains his innocence, but he also confesses to a number of indiscretions. The entries from Amy's diary paint a very different picture of Nick, as well as a very different picture of Amy. Readers will experience the two falling in and out of love, the highs and lows of the marriage, from two perspectives that don't quite match up.

The characters of Nick and Amy are real people. At least that's how it feels. Flynn crafts remarkably authentic characters and utterly believable relationships. I developed genuine feelings for both leads, feelings that morphed and grew over the course of the novel. It's impossible not to care about these people. That doesn't mean they are necessarily likable. I've seen some complaints that they aren't "likable enough." Well yeah, that's true in a sense, because they are placed under a high intensity microscope. The deeper you look into someone the less you will find to like. But it goes both ways. The deeper you look into someone the more you can find to admire. I had anxiety over finishing the novel because I cared that much about these characters.

The ancillary characters are also well drawn. It takes no effort at all to picture these people and their motivations and their relationships. There is no shortage of suspects, even though all of the evidence seems to be pointing in one direction. It is enough to make you wonder how thoroughly the media influences perception. Everyone always assumes the husband is to blame but that's what we have been conditioned to believe.

GONE GIRL is a psychological thriller of the highest order. Hitchcock style. The suspense is almost unbearable. Horror movie directors need to take some freaking notes. This is how you do it. GONE GIRL is too involved for a movie but I would love to see it picked up and developed as a television mini-series. Even when I expected one twist I was still floored when my revelation came true. It's just that good. There is some very dark, very twisted stuff here but none of it is beyond the realm of belief. And that's what makes it so creepy. This could happen to you. It could happen to me. I really, really hope this doesn't happen to me. It just goes to show you, sometimes the most disturbing thing of all is not knowing someone half so well as you think.

Recommended Age: 17+ Language: Plenty. Violence: Uh, wow I guess there really isn't any violence. But it is discussed. Sex: No real sex here either, but there is discussion of sex. \

Nick Sharps Elitist Book Reviews

Let me start off this review by issuing a massive SPOILER WARNING for a novel that came out a little less than a decade ago. There will be major spoilers ahead, so I would advise you to read this book (if you, like me, have been living under a rock for the past 8 years or so) before looking at this review.. As a matter of fact, this won’t be as much of a review, instead, it’ll be a series of my reactions to a couple of things in the story.

I was meaning to read this book in 2015 after I read and enjoyed Paula Hawkins’s “The Girl on The Train”. I’ve heard many people comparing that book to this one and I wanted to see how similar the two were. In my opinion, I didn’t get as much similarities as I was expecting, but they were both enjoyable psychological thrillers.

Anyways, Gone Girl has been in my library for a while and I finally decided to read it. I’ll have to admit, about halfway through, I had a strong feeling that I would be giving this book 5 stars. It literally grabbed me from the beginning and never let me go. All the high praise I've heard about it throughout the years didn't do this story justice.

The first -I wanna say- half of this book is the main story. Married woman mysteriously disappears, and the husband is left to find out what happened to his wife. However, the story changes point of views from the husband to the wife’s perspective through a series of diary entries she wrote, and I have to admit. I was completely fooled!

As the story goes on, I’m wondering who kidnapped this man’s wife. I started gathering suspects right off the bat. The neighbor who informed Nick that the door was open. He was my number one suspect at first. Then I blamed the people from Amy’s past. For a brief moment, I thought Nick’s twin sister kidnapped her. I was just looking for answers and I knew the only way I would get my answer is if I keep reading. The beauty of mystery novels.

So, for the first half of the book, I’m looking at all of the surrounding characters funny. Someone here is a murderer. And as I’m doing that, Amy’s diary entries begin to take a dark turn. She starts writing about Nick’s coldness. Nick becoming a completely new person than the guy she told us about in the first diary entry. He became someone who I honestly started to dislike. He treated her horribly, he even shows a weird abusive side. The later diary entries made me think that maybe HE did it all along and that’s the big twist. I also had a small thought that maybe she faked her kidnapping because he was so abusive and she wanted to escape him, but that seemed like it wouldn’t be it, so I shoved that theory to the side. Not like it mattered anyway. Lol.

Turns out, I was half-right with that theory I pushed to the side. The whole time, I’m worried about this sweet, lovable woman and it turns out she staged the whole thing, knowing that all signs will point to her horrible, possibly abusive husband. After the halfway point of the novel, we find out that the Amy that we knew from the diaries was a made-up character. She’s nothing like who she appeared to be. She’s manipulative and has always been that way. There are a few moments where I screamed at my Kindle, “This woman is evil!” I was completely caught off guard and that doesn’t happen a lot.

Then we see the beginning of Amy’s plan, living as a supposedly dead woman and even that builds suspense in itself because she has to continuously look over her shoulder and hope that nobody ever notices her. It’s a crazy way to live, but Amy is always three steps ahead in planning. She befriends two people who are also on the run apparently, and they end up turning on her, and stealing the money she had reserved for her new life, leaving her with a cut lip, no money, and a ruined plan. Leaving her to call her high school sweetheart, a man we met earlier in the story and he -to my disappointment- ends up helping her. Inviting a woman who is allegedly kidnapped to your house is a bad move. I knew that wasn’t going to end well. I thought Amy would somehow get into a fight with Desi (the guy who came to her rescue), but I didn’t expect her to actually murder him, but the more I thought about it, it makes sure he can’t tell the truth and pay a bunch of high-quality lawyers to make sure she spends the rest of her life behind bars. Another case of Amy being one step ahead of everybody. This woman is a criminal mastermind.

Not only was this story a freaking roller coaster of a read, but it was just overall fun to read. So many layers to the story, so many twists and turns, clever dialogue all throughout, and even the end surprised me. I was sure this story would end with one of the main characters going to jail, but surprisingly, it was (sort of) a happy ending… at least for the puppet master it was a happy ending. 5 stars!

My apologies for the verbosity. I don’t usually write such lengthy reviews, but my ambivalences seemed to require explanation. Gone Girl reads like tabloid fiction, which is not a bad thing for Gillian Flynn because tabloid fiction sells, as the popularity of the book well illustrates. People love gossip, even though it’s gossip concerning fictional character celebrities. It’s why reality TV is so hot. If you love that stuff, you are not alone and you will love this book. I don’t. It was recommended to me for the interesting psycho-dynamics of the main characters.

I do love the author’s writing style. Her command of language, the dark humor and quick wit kept me reading. Most of the time, when she broke the rules, it was done with purpose and it worked. Her powerful, clever prose in the narrative was perfect for this sort of read. The dialogue was never pointless. The mystery of Amy missing was introduced early enough, and the clues the author carefully crafted were masterful. Amy knew Nick and Nick knew Amy, and each had a most distinctive voice.

The first half of this book was pure torture for me, slow and tedious. Multiple first person POV always slows the story down and creates an ebb and flow. It’s not my favorite technique. I want action and a forward momentum. You learn all the nuances and details about Amy and Nick, their relationship to each other and with others, and how they thought and felt about each other. I also don’t care for chick-lit or romance, but they are popular genres, which again leans to the popularity of this book.

The points in Part One could have been made with half the words. But that’s the price you pay for well-developed, multidimensional characters. Aside from the mystery, it was almost completely character development. This is going to sound like a contradiction: I’m not big on back story being at the front of the book, but with the dual points of view and the unreliable narrator elements, it all worked marvelously well for the story in the long run. The pace kicked up a few notches once we got out of Amy’s diary.

However, it’s worth repeating, I do feel the character development was overwritten, over dramatized. There was a tremendous amount of unnecessary repetition; words, sentences, phrases, paragraphs, rephrasing example after example. Too many times while reading, I told the author, “Enough already! You just said that. We’ve heard that one too many times. Do we really need to go over this again? Okay, you’ve made your point; can we just get on with the story?” (See how annoying that is. It doesn’t emphasize anything. It just grates.)

There has been a lot of talk about these characters. People have said there isn’t one likeable character in this book. The criticisms reinforce people’s intolerance of the mentally ill, the stigmatization we see. Margo; she is the most natural, down-to-earth character, and sane. Nick and Amy are sick, (aside from that they are likable). I do believe my empathy as a nurse played a part here; I felt a serious sadness for them. Both of them. Their story touched me emotionally in that way. That it did, and the fact that the plot unraveled quickly for me as a psychiatric professional with years of experience in forensics and crisis stabilization, bodes well for the author’s deep understanding of how the severely disturbed think and behave, and why.

It was supposed to be a thriller and suspense>crime novel. I was expecting thrilling suspense. There was crime (albeit intentionally clichéd and a sturdy, well-established, tired trope), there was fantastic psychological intrigue throughout, but not much thrill or suspense. Maybe I have lived too long, seen and heard too much, worked in too many psych facilities/forensics units, but I had the ending completely figured down to the finite details before I was two-thirds finished with the novel. The twists and turns were predictable. Nothing shocked me (except the blood on the kitchen floor, somebody needed sutures). I never feared for anyone in this book except the one who died. That didn’t stop me from enjoying the work. It was interesting from the psychological perspective, but I never found anything really thrilling about the story. It wasn’t Hitchcock, Highsmith or King suspense. That was a big disappointment, but it’s not the author’s fault. It’s just where I’m coming from.

I don’t read reviews until I’ve completed a book. There is enormous quibbling about the ending. Long standing patterns of behavior don’t change in real life without major medical intervention. Short of that, the ending is the only possible ending it could have had and remained character true and realistic.

I’m not compelled to see the movie. My husband has this next on his reading list and I’m curious for his reaction. He’s a crime novel aficionado. I would recommend the read. This was a new-to-me author and I feel she demonstrates remarkable writing talent, skill and a commitment to her writing process and the challenges it poses.

On a final note, I would like to say thanks to the publishers who set the price for the book. I think it was fair and so often that’s not the case with the traditionally published. That’s to be respected. I am giving one star for two reasons: You didn’t jack up the price for a book in demand, and the digital copy was very well done!

A great reading experience! I took to it from the very beginning and I felt like I had found a unique book that would not only surpass all my first impressions but also tower above all in the genre. Although it was not as captivating and fascinating at the end, its downside did not outshine its brilliance. To say that it is very well written would not be even close to the author’s outstanding talent for getting us into the characters and for setting such an inviting environment for us to delve into. Gillian Flynn shows an admirable ability to build an intelligent plot with a cleverly structured story, and a sharp wit to guide us through the suspense, using meticulous and precise language each step of the way. An author that is very skilled in developing complex characters that tell their stories through excellent dialogues, showing their frailties, flaws of character, weaknesses and even their meanness. Which is one of the book’s highlights because it allows us to deal with real characters to whom we can connect and empathize with, in spite of not being completely likeable all the time on account of their remarkable shortcomings and almost sociopathic traits. The high quality mystery plot enriches their drama with clever clues skillfully inserted throughout the book, feeding us with elements that would help to figure out what happened with Amy, the female protagonist, after her disappearance. In her brilliant, unique style, the author shows extreme ability to surprise us in letting the story unfold in unexpected ways. I will not talk too much about this aspect because it would be very tricky and easy to let spoilers slip. I can say that the center of the plot is to find out what happened to Amy: Did she die? Was she killed? If so, was her husband the killer? The elements for us to solve this mystery come from two points of view: Amy’s, through her diary, and her husband Nick’s, through his experiences and reactions in the aftermath of her disappearance. Both approaches are intricately carved into subplots containing insightful remarks about marriage, relationship, parenting and family issues. To do justice to the genre it belongs, the story unfolds with plenty of twists and turns, in fact, as many as to delight the most avid, passionate and demanding fan. In spite of being a fan of the genre myself, that is exactly where the weak spot of the book lies to me. I felt hooked throughout the first half due to the writer’s talent to create a story that does not follow the pattern of the predictable good guys/bad guys structure. Here we have regular people surprising us for not being as average as we thought, connected by an intelligent, intriguing, absorbing mystery. Somehow, throughout the second half, especially in the last third, when it seemed that the book was going to get more engaging, it didn’t, because the plot twists got a little over the top and so they remained. The successive changes in the development transformed my relationship with the book because I could neither make sense of the actions anymore nor follow them along. It seemed I was not being ushered to get to know the characters and their story anymore, but was in the middle of a sequence of senseless inconsistent behaviors by the characters. It looked like I was being lied to, hoaxed by both characters. At this point, the book lost its power to challenge me as a reader and, from then on, it set me off into a more passive reading since the course could go in any direction, weird ones sometimes. From this point on, it was almost another book. The characters’ twisted and mysterious minds turned into a shallow meanness, with no background history to support my understanding of them, which gave them an uncomfortable inconsistency. A story that was wonderful all along the first third, gets weakened and loses its depth and density, reaching its negative climax by delivering a loose end. One that, even if kept the way it is in view of being the author’s choice, certainly would have brought a less negative impact if it had been more worked with, more integrated. The problem for me is not with the content, even because such an unconventional book would not come by with a conventional ending, but because it is not wrapped up. The way it is put leaves an ill-fitting void because it does not provide the necessary connections, knots are not tied, and answers for raised issues are not put across. I felt let down and a bit frustrated by this abrupt change because it played a role in my reading; nevertheless, it could not change what I made of the essence of the book. I could set aside my disappointment and enjoy what I regarded as an unconventional, thought-provoking, praiseworthy mystery book, with very interesting developments, that would have kept its high quality all through the end if it were shorter and had the open issues wrapped up at the end of the second part. Unless Gillian Flynn plans to bring out a sequel. Finally, I would like to say that, weighing the pros and cons, I recommend it as a good reading and would dare to say that, even if you agree with me and see a decline in the last part, you will enjoy immensely the rich storytelling and the author’s refined style. Given that, I think it would not be fair to downgrade my whole evaluation from my disappointment with the last part. That is why I give 4 stars for the book and reserve 1 star only for the end.

Gillian Flynn is a very talented writer. Her potential shows in each of her three novels. I loved Sharp Objects. I was not wild about Dark Places as a matter of personal preference, not because of any lack of writing talent as much as that I did not feel drawn to the characters, but I respect the work. I am disappointed in Gone Girl. Ms. Flynn has a clear talent for sharp and often witty prose, as well as a very vivid imagination. With Gone Girl, however, I felt she tried a bit too hard. The novel is divided into three sections. Section One introduces the main plot, and juxtaposes the two protagonists in back-to-back tellings of their respective versions of events, alternating one chapter for each. I found this a very effective tool to introduce some confusion and doubt regarding who exactly to believe, as well as some insight into how we all can miscommunicate with each other. His story, Her story, and the Truth. The Second section takes a radical turn, increasing the tension developed in the First section even more. A very neat trick, very inventive. The overreaching, in my opinion, begins to occur in the Third section. Plot lines become stretched, and the characters start to feel made up rather than real; the whole thing begins to feel unbelievable. The final summation of the book takes a new twist past the plot line itself and into the psychology of relationships, and this is where I felt the novel really fell apart. I had the feeling Ms. Flynn, a gifted writer, had run into a serious case of writer's block somewhere about two-thirds into this novel, and just began to punt. She seemed to try to outdo herself with twists and turns that began to lack a sense of authenticity. Inventiveness turned into contrivance. The issues that shaped Sections One and Two suddenly were resolved, and there began a departure into something new, but I did not feel satisfied that the mysteries presented in Sections One and Two had been satisfactorily concluded as much as forced to ending. My advise to Ms. Flynn for (hopefully) some future novel, if I could offer my advise, would be to keep it simple and not try to be clever and overreach with incessant twists and sudden jumps into new terrain. Better to finish one story well than to over-complicate with too much novelty. I can not say I disliked this book. The first two sections kept me coming back for more. I wish it had stayed on course the entire time instead of veering into new waters at the end.

************************** WARNING - SPOILER ALERT **************************

The alternating voices of Nick and Amy really kept me guessing as to who was telling the more reliable version of the truth through the entire first section. The opening paragraphs of the second section stunned me, and I found myself rereading them a few times to make sure I was getting it right. Having Adorable Amy transform into Psycho Amy this way was a shocker, and added energy to the story. Disbelief began in the third section with Amy's return. The mystery element was now gone. We had been told all through section two that Amy had invented the entire frame-up, but this still left room for a sudden twist to occur where, we might have been told, it wasn't that at all, it REALLY was something ELSE, had Ms. Flynn chosen to take that path. But she didn't. Instead, we were presented with the necessary, and forced, pseudo-reconciliation between Nick and Amy. We were not informed of any police work into the truthfulness of Amy's story. Apparently the police were too embarrassed to do any further work after falsely accusing Nick in sections one and two. Not very believable. For all the work put into constructing the frame-up in the first two sections, there was almost no work put into making Amy's story seem really believable both to the cops and to the public. Everyone just seemed to accept her word at face value, period end. The descent into the psychology of dysfunction in relationships at the conclusion of this third section would have been better suited for a new, different novel, than as the ending of this one. There was just too much ground to cover, psychologically speaking, and considering the level of dysfunction being as high as it was (read: psychopathic) to simply brush it all to perfection in a final rushed section. I found this ending the most disappointing part of the book, not for its theme of dysfunction, but because it simply did not belong here in this book, much less as its resolution and conclusion. I felt a real lack of closure when I had finished. A strong storyline had been abandoned, and a premise for a new and complex discussion of relationships and human nature was not given its due.