Novel Review: Gone Girl
Nick runs through the house, crying out for Amy, belligerently. Realizing that the house is empty - save for Bleecker, the pet cat - he dials the police. But, things are not as they appear as in the several upcoming months, police discover evidence implicating Nick. Behind the picture-perfect marital facade hides a series of events filled with lies and deception between the couple slowly, painfully ripping them apart. Nick grows hard feelings towards his estranged wife, but is his mounting frustration enough to make him a killer?
The novel by Gillian Flynn is both gripping and slow-burning as the plot is riddled with peaks and valleys. At times, I couldn't put the book done. At other times, I felt like Flynn was just on a rant about how stupid men are, as she portrays Nick as a male bimbo and Amy as a clever girl. And, judging from the reviews on Goodreads, I am not alone.
"This book is such a steaming pile of sh** for so many reasons and hands down the worst book I have ever read, " writes one reviewer on Goodreads. I wouldn't go as far as that, but it does drag you through the mud and minutia of Amy's emotional (sometimes flaming) thoughts via diary entries, then head-hops to stoic Nick - who stupidly stumbles over himself in conversations with police officers and family members, slipping details about secret spouts with Amy.
The fact that Nick loses his job, arriving "home just after four, a bulb of beer and cigarettes and fried-egg odor attached to him, a placenta of stink," makes him out to be a completely hopeless slug from whom Amy needs to escape. This generic topic could have been written about by anyone. Why is this one special? Moreover, why has it been turned into a movie?
Flynn's issue is that she mistakes catchphrases for good writing. For example, "There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”
A good writer describes things in such a way that the reader doesn't feel left out. I want to know what it is and why she feels that way! This is just one of several descriptions that baffled me.
The novel kind of borders on being a fish-out-water tale. Behind, Amy leaves a series of clues at special locations for Nick. It's a game for her. As he is left to solve the puzzle, Amy's little excursion gets her into trouble. She goes out of town and to somewhere isolated, encountering a so-called friend named Desi. He takes her to his posh lake house where things really start to turn bad for Amy. Desi begins to starve her in order to get her back to "Amy circa 1987."
"He's thinning me up, he always preferred his women waify... I am almost my normal weight again, and my hair is growing out... Yes, it's all about my well-being, not that fact that he wants me to look exactly like I did before."
Flynn aims to create the worst marriage ever. I guess the moral of the book is that marriage is a prison sentence. It's about life and death. That's a very bleak look on love, but I wonder how many people feel this way. How many people live in misery? How many couples pretend to love each other?
Of course, it's chick-lit - a lot of drama with little payoff. There's no mastermind behind a perfect crime, no serial killer caught red-handed, no killing of a monster - just a couple not made for each other.
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