Gone Girl

Potential Spoiler Alert:

I just finished reading the rest of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It is a psychological investigation into two incredibly self-centered people who grate on your nerves, and who terrify you into hoping for the only solution that you're not sure you want.

At the beginning of the story, I was completely against Nick, the husband who everyone thinks killed his wife after she disappears and the scene seems fishy. Then you start to realize that his dear wife Amy is alive and well, and quite a talented liar. This novel is a talented ping-pong match of who do you hate more? Who grabs your sympathy? Really it would be nice if they both went down in flames. There are moments where you despise each character with an inner loathing, almost like you know them in person (or can think of someone you know in reality who fills you with such seething annoyance and disgust). There are also moments where you feel a deep longing to help each character, as something they desperately need is taken away from them - life, love, money, caring parents, justice, and deeply needed escapes. There are characters you want to slap (besides the married couple), and characters you keep rooting for, but deep down, you know they're going to fail.

Then comes the ending ... will there finally be justice for the most insanely detailed crime that pulled the wool over a nation's eyes? No, there won't be. Instead the sick and twisted game of Gillian Flynn's imagining just continues on. I have to say, based on my feelings from her first novel that I read, Dark Places, I don't much care for her endings. Maybe that makes her books good ones? You don't get what you want, you don't get what you expect, and you'll think about the plot and the characters for hours.

Gone Girl should be required of all entry level psychology classes in college, as students try to understand Amy's psychosis and Nick's sterile behavior and stupidity maybe they will learn something about sociopaths and vindictiveness that will shape their future careers and lend insight into why crazy people always seem to be so egotistical and only care about themselves. In the end, Nick and Amy probably got what they deserved - each other.


You will be enveloped in this book and its constant surprises. You will be thrilled to no end at the macabre nature of a marriage between two people, and you may even wonder if your own relationship could take such nasty turns, if only you or your partner were capable of such detailed deception and anger. Read this book. I can understand why it made the bestselling book list of summer 2012.