Gone Girl

I finally broke down and bought the book everyone was proclaiming to be the ‘book of the summer.’ Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn did not disappoint.

Let’s run through the basic plot points.

Amy and Nick have been married for five years and are currently weathering a bit of a rough patch. They’ve relocated to Nick’s hometown to care for his parents and both have recently lost their jobs. Nick has managed to find a new job but Amy spends her days trying to keep busy as everything she has ever known and taken for granted to be true, is gone.

On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick leaves the house early after a breakfast of anniversary crepes prepared by Amy. When he returns later, there are signs of a struggle and Amy is gone.

This book is a terrifying look at marriage. Seriously. Having just read Committed and felt OK about the idea of marriage, Gone Girl scared the bejeezus out of me. After the disappearance, we follow Nick as he tries to work out what the hell has happened to his wife, all the while realizing that he’s probably not reacting the way a scared, worried husband of a missing woman should. In between the Nick chapters, are the Amy chapters where she takes us back to the beginning of their relationship and fleshes out how they got to this point.

Amy and Nick talk about the same things but tell different versions. One or both of them aren’t being completely honest.

Honestly I didn’t really like either of them. Which I think may have been the point? They were so honest about their flaws, so transparent when it came to explaining their actions, they don’t leave a lot of room for one to feel sorry for them or identify with them. At least I don’t.

But despite that, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t stop reading. I had to find out what these two people did to each other.

This book is dark and twisted. It reminded me a little of Camilla Lackberg’s books but in those books we’re always outside of the investigation, following the police side of things. In Flynn’s book, we’re a part of the crime, desperately following Nick as he tries to unravel the clues that have been left for him. This book is brilliant too. I don’t want to give away too much but this book is diabolical and it makes me wonder a little bit about how Flynn’s mind works, that she was able to pull this off.

I can see why people have been hooked on this book this summer. There is something delicious about sitting out in beautiful weather to read a deeply disturbing book. Gone Girl is deeply disturbing and filled with pure unadulterated hate.

I loved it.