Gone Girl

Quotes

Genre

• Thriller
• Suspense
• Mystery
• Crime
• Contemporary
• Adult

Trigger Warnings

• Ageism
• Animal death (very graphic)
• Beauty standards, specifically targeted towards women
• Cheating
• Cissexism
• Cops
• Domestic violence
• Fatphobia, specifically towards women
• Homelessness
• Homophobia/lesbophobia (slight)
• House intruder
• Incest (mentioned)
• Miscarriage
• Misogyny
• Murder
• Pregnancy
• Prison rape (mentioned)
• Rape (mentioned)
• Sex (graphic)
• Sexual abuse of children (mentioned)

*There may be spoilers in this review. I will try to avoid major spoilers but some need to be brought up to be discussed. This one for sure is going to have spoilers so if you want to enjoy the twists I’d go read the book first.

Summary

Who are you?
What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police 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 weren’t made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife?

Characters

• Nick Dunne- a struggling writer who is trying to find out what happened to his missing wife
• Amy Elliott Dunne – Mock’s wife and the inspiration for her parents’ book series Amazing Amy
• (Mar)Go Dunne – Nick’s sister
• Bill Dunne – Nick’s father
• Rand Elliott – Amy’s father
• Marybeth Elliott – Amy’s mom
• Boney – sympathetic officer who sincerely seems invested in finding the truth.
• Officer Gilpin – male counterpart to Bones
• Lawyer – Top notch lawyer who specialized in cases like Nick’s
• Andy – the other woman

Setting

New York and Missouri in modern times.

Overview

I was super late to the party. I don’t read a lot of thrillers or mysteries not because of any prejudice or anything there is just a severe lack of dragons usually. I guess that counts as prejudice to some degree. They also tend to focus on people with flaws that are harder for me to get over in a real world context. I struggle to enjoy a book if I can’t like the characters on some level. That’s painting with a broad brush but the few times I have dipped my toes in, I pulled it back out not exactly excited to cannonball in.

That being said, there is a lot of skill and talent that go into writing successful stories in this genre. Gone Girl helped redefine the genre and pulled in a whole new audience to contemporary literature. It wasn’t high on my TBR, and the louder audiences got, the more I told myself I would get to it eventually. The movie came out and I still didn’t do anything with it. A college course pushed it into my hands and my opinions are… complicated.

Pros

The writing in this is top-notch. The structure of switching between Nick and Amy, especially with the time span Flynn used, amped up the tension. Nick is set up to be untrustworthy from the way he keeps secrets and tells little lies to control the situations he’s involved in. Amy’s diary over the years of their relationship made the disconnection worse and it really set Nick up to look awful. Which is exactly what it was designed to do.

So this is the hardest part for me. I hated Amy. Like big kid hated. The diary made me itchy and my brain was just screaming about unreliable narrators. The twist in part two when she reveals her plan made me feel very validated but also just fueled more of my dislike. Going back to why this is a pro, the writing for both paralleled in a way I wasn’t ready to see. Nick would casually talk about their anniversary presents and how they would have preferred what the other received. In her diary, Amy talks about how he had been coveting the stationary she got for him. The back to back chapters with the contradictory feedback pulls the readers back and forth as they try to decide who to trust.

The layers of Amy and how she has constructed her whole self outside of how she truly thinks and feels was frustrating and fascinating. She was a new modern kind of monster, the kind who gaslights and can think ahead to lay a trail straight to your downfall. She really pissed me off because somehow she made me relate and sympathize with a cheater. I actually understood where Nick was coming from and it made sense for him to find emotional solace from someone else. He still could have been an adult and ended the relationship with Amy but like I understood and that makes me a little hostile.

Go was the best of them all and I just wanted her to have her own shoutout because if anyone had a right to do a murder it would be her and she didn’t. So, y’know kudos, girl.

Cons

I don’t know if it landed, but I really don’t like Amy. Girlboss, Gaslight, Gatekeep for real. She orchestrates everything around her and she goes above and beyond with her vengeance against those around her. Narcissism and entitlement make her a real nightmare.

The fact that Nick decides not just to stay but to try and raise a kid in her vicinity made him plummet in my opinion as well. They’re both nuts but now you’re going to throw a child in the mix? After the Punch and Judy dolls? I was with Go. She was the only one with sense.

It isn’t really my kind of story. It was vulgar in a way that, now that I’m thinking about it was probably intentional shock value to throw Amy’s character into different lights. The people have little to no redemption and in the end things don’t really change except to get worse. Also that one guy died and nothing ever happened because of it. Sheesh.

I have to say the hype had an impact on the book too. The loud public praise made it difficult to take it for what it was maybe meant to be. Whenever the world loses their mind collectively over something I get a little itchy. I think it might be a condition.

Final Thoughts

So again, not really my bag as far as books go. It is one that I would love to talk about to just about anybody because of the layers. There are so many things going on and so many clues to catch onto. As much as I didn’t like the characters the writing really is a modern masterpiece. The parallels and the tug of war makes the tension thick and the twists and revelations all the more juicy. I haven’t watched the movie yet, so I don’t know how it holds up with the book.

It’s worth the read.

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