On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media - as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents - the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter - but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
I know everyone and their mother, or least I and my mother, has read this book, and I am very late to the game. I blame the library hold list, and my mother, for not lending me her copy (SIDENOTE FAX: I read this interesting piece (linking to this more in-depth article) which, inter alia, says that English is to blame for all the blame going around - our language prefers the active tense of "My mother took the book" to the passive "The book was taken." THE MORE YOU KNOW. I can't help pointing fingers, you're the one who taught me English! Also known as the Twinkie defense).
ANYWAY, I read it and I really liked it. It's a basic beach read, actually, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. This is formulaic (that formula would be, more or less, (The Bad Seed + The Good Son) x (Drew Peterson + Jennifer Wilbanks) + Elvis Costello's Watching the Detectives and a dash of War of the Roses - the 1989 movie, not the Plantagenet fights in the 1400s - Mix well, let simmer for four hours and serve), but even though it evokes all manner of associations, it never feels tired. Flynn has created an entirely distinct body of work, one which still manages to seem (sort of) plausible, even given the outrageousness of the story. It's suspenseful in the right parts, and manages to build through somewhat increasingly crazy plot twists without coming off as totally unrealistic.
There really ain't no way to talk about Gone Girl without mentioning spoilers...a lot of spoilers. So beware, all ye who enter here.
I was (possibly more than I should have been) extremely gratified to find out that my early supposition was correct: Amy is a lot smarter than Nick. While both are obviously fairly morally deficient, Flynn does a good job of making you root for both characters: because they're both so reprehensible, you get a thrill each time one of them gets one over on the other.
The first half of the book ("Boy Loses Girl") really draws you in - although it's much slower paced, as it details both the first days following Amy's disappearance, as well as diary entries dating back years. You're presented with Nick, beginning to flounder in the face of his spiraling lies, and you feel not just suspicion, but also contempt. Regardless of whether Nick did or didn't do it, you begin to think, he's behaving so stupidly he almost deserves what's going to happen to him. That feeling is assisted by Amy's diary, which manages to juggle an almost impossible variety of goals: from Amy's perspective, the need to create plausible and yet completely fake entries, ones which tie in both what we the reader (and by proxy, the police) know and believe of Nick, and from Flynn's perspective, creating a vision of Amy which both allays suspicion against her and makes her unlikeable - and not just unlikeable, but unlikeable in such a way that it is believable and yet distasteful, and even though you kind of hate the diary-Amy, you still wouldn't want her to die. I mean, she might be kind of a self-centered shrew in disguise, but at least she's not a mope like Nick. And yet, that is exactly the goal of Amy herself - to make you sympathize with her, even while she admits her own faults. I think this is one of Flynn's strongest areas, creating a layered story-line that holds up to alternate views without collapsing (even if the layers aren't all that complicated, it still took some fine maneuvering).
I was actually sort of falling asleep in the first half of the book (it was past my bedtime) and I have to say, once you get past that point at the end of the first half (you'll know the one I mean) the rest of it goes down like (okay, I was going to make a joke about diarrhea here, but let's just leave that to the imagination). Smoothly, let's put it at that. I found myself siding with Amy even more, at least while she played her cards right. I can't resist a nice, competent, get-shit-done lady! Even when she's a sociopath, I guess. The tide begins to turn when she reneges on her original plan (never go back, Amy, you planned so well!) and makes two - no, make that three* - crucial errors. Then you're back on Nick's side, hoping that he'll come out on top against his malevolent wife.
Niggling complaints: in any mystery, there's going to be points at which you go, well, what about THAT plothole, huh, because it is much easier to criticise than to create. Here, there's a couple of details that I'm still wondering about, since everything else was done so expertly: How was everything purchased and delivered to the woodshed? $200,000 of things comes to quite a bit - did Amy buy it all online, and, if so, how was it delivered? Couldn't the UPS man have testified that he delivered a package a week to Amy alone, and never saw hide nor hair of Nick? Or if purchased in person, wouldn't Amy have had to sign for it? Was she an expert forger, too? So that's out there. Another is why wouldn't they have found traces of sleeping pills in Desi? His mother certainly seems like someone who could have put up enough stink to get an inquest, and if so, how would Amy have explained slitting the throat of a drugged and comatose man? [On the other side, it's possible that with a "burning bed" defense argument, Amy would have successfully passed a trial anyway, and Flynn decided to skip it for narrative purposes, but it seems sort of sloppy in a book where everything else is plotted out meticulously] And finally, Nick's decision to stay with Amy for the sake of the baby is asinine, since I'm pretty sure that living with Amy is going to screw that kid regardless of whether or not he has Nick playacting as a loving husband in the background. CUT YOUR LOSSES AND RUN, NICK! But he doesn't, and in the end you think that much less of him. Gosh, you think, after you finish the last section, Nick's going to find himself six feet deep in six months, and I can't bring myself to feel bad. Maybe Amy had a point, after all. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that even though he never does, the ending is still satisfying, since, after all, if Nick has made that bed, then he damn well better lie in it, and he does.
Oh, and also? Not following through on your plan to commit suicide and thus ensure that your husband goes to jail forever in some gigantic "Fuck you" which you wouldn't even be alive to see happen anyway? Weak. I like my sociopaths to really go all out, Amy.
*Falling in with Greta and Jeff; allowing herself to get caught by Desi; falling for Nick's televised pleas; although frankly, the first is the only one that she doesn't manage to make lemonade out of lemons. And given how Gone Girl ends, you could argue that everything wraps up just as she would want it to, anyway.
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