Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

'What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?' Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately 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 aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what did really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war...

• ISBN10: 0297859382
• ISBN13: 9780297859383
• Publish Date: 24 May 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 17 January 2013
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leigha]

A woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary in this homage to sensationalized news.

In my early twenties, I loved watched, reading, or listening to sensationalized news. Ripped from the headlines? I'm there. Recounting the acts of twisted sociopaths? Front row seats, baby. Shock and awe stories? Count me in! And Gone Girl? Well, this book is an homage to such stories. So while this story would have been right up my alley ten years ago, now I could barely finish it.

At its core, this story is about a broken and toxic relationship between two problematic people. It makes for a disappointing thriller, an uninteresting mystery, and a deeply disturbing romance. The atmosphere is oppressive, fitting perfectly with the disturbing narrative. You will find very few sympathetic characters here and lots of disturbing imagery. So while I did not like (or even love) Gone Girl, I understand the appeal. If you're interested in reading or re-reading it, I highly recommend the audio book. The production is top notch.

Personally, I'm hesitant to read another Flynn novel. While I really enjoyed the mystery of Dark Places, this novel just left a really bad taste in my mouth. Time for me to go buy some mouth wash.

tl;dr A ripped-from-the-headlines story for readers interested in an oppressive atmosphere and unsympathetic characters.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Amy Elliot Dunne has disappeared. Every shred of evidence points to her husband Nick. The problem? He didn’t do it. Or did he?

This book has two unreliable narrators leading you all over the place and I have so many feelings about this novel. I feel like I’ve been pushed off a building, drawn and quartered, then run over by a steamroller for good measure. Good God, y’all.

The difference between New York City and Missouri in this book is like the difference between happiness and fear. Gillian Flynn uses the world to show the break in Nick and Amy’s relationship. While the world is great and real and well-written, it’s the characters that will really mess with your mind. Nick and Amy tell the story, and it would be just as insane anywhere.

You can’t like either Amy or Nick. You just can’t. You’re being led in circles to hate them both. They are so well written. they are very complicated characters. The book is practically a character study, peeling them back one layer at a time until we see the core. Or we think we see the core.

There is not a single character in this book who is likable. But they are all very interesting. They are flawed and shallow, they wear their truths on their sleeves and it makes the story that much more interesting.

I really couldn’t put this book down. At about 50%, I was getting bored, then hit the first major twist and it absolutely took off from there. I kept waiting for things to go the way I wanted them to… and they didn’t! Not at all! I leave this book with a general feeling of rage.

It was such an excellent, dark, twisted book. I will absolutely read more by Gillian Flynn.

[thepunktheory]

It was most definitely a gripping read you can't put down. The novel consists of diary entries, alternating between Nick and Amy. So we get a pretty thorough insight into their thoughts and see each event from different angles. The crime part seems thought through perfectly and when the big plot-twist somewhere in the middle, your mind is blown.
But here are the negatives: There's not a single person in this novel I like. Nobody I can relate to or feel with. Especially Amy annoyed me. At first I just rolled my eyes at the character and the more pages I read the more I disliked her. Nick was constantly framed as the nice guy who just acts a bit weird and thus everybody hates. Well, the author did a thorough job. As hard as I tried, I couldn't scrape up even a tiny bit of sympathy for him.
Despite an interesting plot I kept wishing for the book to be over as the characters kept annoying me more with each page.

[zooloo1983]

I can see why the movie ended where it did now. I really enjoyed the book until she came home and the movie had finished. These two people were toxic for each other and when he tried to kill her and then stopped because he couldn't live without her. And then because she had to have the last word got pregnant I felt the book had lost its way a little bit and felt let down at the end. Up until that point I loved listening to the audiobook and couldn't wait to hear what happened now I don't!! Overall (ignoring the end) I did enjoy the book. You hated both the characters for one reason or another but I enjoyed their story.

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

Initial reaction:



I must live under a rock because somehow I made it two and a half years after the release of Gone Girl without seeing a single spoiler. I picked this book up when I got a chance to listen to the audio and expected to be totally blown away by it. Although I didn't know what it was about, I did know that everyone was obsessed with it for awhile and that there was supposed to be a huge twist! The hype was real with this one.

Just in case you also live under a rock, this book is about a woman who goes missing and whose husband does not exactly look innocent in the midst of the search for her. Amy is a New York native who has been dragged to a small town with her husband, Nick, somewhat against her will. Their marriage has been bumpy for awhile and neither of them are as happy as they used to be. Then she disappears.

This story is told from the perspectives of both Nick and Amy, part of it using flashbacks from Amy's diary. From the beginning there's doubt about whether or not Nick is innocent in the disappearance (because it's always the husband) and both narrators are pretty unreliable. Throughout this book I wasn't entirely clear what I felt for the characters. It was obvious who the author was setting me up to sympathize with, but I didn't care for either Nick or Amy at any time during this story. Both irritated me in different ways from page one, but I'm thinking that might have been intentional. Still, it's hard for me to enjoy a book completely when I can't connect to the characters at all.

The most important part of Gone Girl is the story, though. Or at least, that's what I expected to be totally wowed by. I most enjoyed the investigation and trying to figure out what all of the clues meant. Maybe it's because I knew that there was a huge twist coming, but I wasn't that shocked when it actually did come. I can't say I predicted it exactly, but I also kind of saw it coming, even if I wasn't sure what IT was. There were times when I was surprised, but overall I expected a lot more from a book that I only know about BECAUSE it's supposed to be completely mind blowing.

My biggest letdown with Gone Girl was the pacing. I understand the need for flashbacks and I liked the way the story was structured in different parts, but it was incredibly slow. If I hadn't been listening to the audio, I may have given up early on. Both Nick and Amy slowly meander through their narratives discussing minute details of their lives way too often. I don't know why, but I expected a much more quickly paced story with more surprising twists and turns and I definitely wanted at least one character to connect to.

Overall, Gone Girl was just okay for me. I know that a lot of people LOVED it, but unfortunately I just don't think this is the book for me. I did enjoy the story, but I had enough problems with it that I just can't call it a good read.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

[clq]

I apologise in advance, but this is going to be the kind of review that keeps going on about the book having been adapted to a film, and, even worse, I'm going to let the fact that I've seen the film colour my review of the book. Sorry, but it's impossible not to. But hey, at least I'm not going to spoil anything!

I saw the film of Gone Girl when it came out, and knew I had to read the book. I liked the book, just as I liked the film. However, I think I would have enjoyed the book a lot more had I not known that was going to happen.

It's a good story, and, I think, the kind of story it's best to know nothing at all about before reading the book. So I'm not going to say anything. It's cleverly written, engaging, and enough is kept from the reader to leave us guessing, both about the story and the characters in it. But, again, knowing where the story was going I found myself enjoying the build-ups, the uncertainty, and the twists much less than I think I would have had I approached the story cold.

It's probably unfair to blame this on the book though, and I don't. At least not much. I had hoped my experience would be more like that of reading We Need to Talk About Kevin, also after having seen the film. In that case the book was very different from the film, and I found myself enjoying the book immensely, as I had the film, but in a very different way. Reading Gone Girl it almost felt like I was reading the book for the second time, which probably speaks to how well it was adapted.

So in general I'd recommend Gone Girl to anyone, but if you haven't seen the film I'd say this should probably be the next book you read. If only so you don't know what happens when you do.

[Ace]

Uggggh did not enjoy. Okay slight lie. Once it hit part two it was interesting and I could stand reading it. Nick somewhat grew on me but mostly I just read to find out wth happened

[celinenyx]

Gone Girl. The book that had everyone talking. A dark, twisted psychological thriller about a man whose wife is missing - but all signs are pointing towards him. Yet he says he hasn't killed her. What is going on?

Something Gone Girl does really well is show how a marriage can go from fairy-tale perfect to a living hell. At first, Nick and Amy's relationship seems wonderful. But after a year or three the cracks start to show, and things go from bad to worse. In a way, Gone Girl shows a development that so many relationships have - the swan dive downward, until it seems impossible that these two people have loved each other at some point.

As a thriller, Gone Girl is an accomplished book. It is littered with hints and possibilities, and will keep you guessing until the big reveal. It breaks the thriller conventions, though, by not having the big reveal as the climax or ending of the book. You figure out what is happening a bit after halfway, and the rest of the book shows what happens after. On one hand, this gives the book an interesting twist that surprises many people. On the other hand, this means that there is little suspense left until the end of the book - it ends with a sad fizzle instead of a crescendo.

What makes reviewing this book hard for me is that I can't see the work and the author separately. My copy had an interview with the author in the back, which left a bitter taste after reading it. The two main characters, Nick and Amy, are incredibly unlikeable. They are terrible for each other, absolutely dreadful. That's fine. I don't necessarily need to like the main characters to enjoy a book. The author, however, does like them. She has also made some rather sexist comments about how Cool Girl doesn't exist (apparently women cannot be hedonists) and how most "good, beautiful things" are done by women. Because women are always the ones who decorate and make sure parties are held, etcetera. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, this complete division of "men" and "women", where women are attributed this kind of fantastic sense of home-making and mother instinct, which should be valued higher than whatever the men are doing (like fathering, maybe?). Maybe this interview doesn't reflect well on how Ms Flynn really thinks, but this didn't make me value her opinions highly.

Also, apparently Ms Flynn didn't own a pair of scissors until she was thirty. HOW DID SHE OPEN THINGS?

So, to recap. Good book. Kind of loses steam after halfway. Don't like the author's ideas. Also don't like the direction the story took at the ending. Not as dark and twisted as I was expecting. Pages turned quickly.

[Katie King]

**3 Stars**

I have a confession about Gone Girl...

I had it completely written it off.

I'm obsessed with thrillers just like anyone else, but this book sounded dumb to me. I mean, "what's in the gift box"? Seriously? So I never read it. It was made into a movie. I never planned on seeing it. People keep telling me it's amazing and I just did the "yeah....sure...." head nod. Then I saw it on sale for $2.99 on Amazon.

This book sure was a surprise! I went in with low expectations, but I ended up getting sucked in and finishing it within 24 hours. Very unexpected...

Overall I really enjoyed the plot. Like I said, I love thrillers and especially love crime stories. Although I personally think Amy overreacted a tad bit to news of her husband's infidelity (you could have tried to confront him...), I can see why that happened within the context of her past. Amy is a straight up sociopath, and as such basically lives off of manipulation. Hearing about what she did to other people in her life was quite disturbing.

What really got me about this book was how it was presented to the reader. I fell for the lie making up the first half of the book, as I'm sure most readers did. I didn't know there was going to be some crazy plot twist, so of course I wasn't expecting it. Imagine my surprise when it comes out that Amy is framing her husband for her own murder.

But the second half, I was not a fan. Yeah Amy set up this whole thing just because her husband cheated on her, but it was a bit too fantastic for me to believe. Amy's whole plot against her husband was convoluted to a fault, and all the resolution was very convenient. There is no way that that kind of plan could work in real life, with such dependency on the separate pieces that the plan needed to work perfectly. It even mentions in the book how conveniently things seemed to have worked out for Amy (according to her public account). I was mad when they couldn't dig up ANYTHING on her.

One thing that was interesting was how fast my loyalties shifted. The first half, I felt bad for Amy (but didn't necessarily demand Nick's head). In the second half, I grew to hate Amy with each passing page. The fact that she feels like she has the right to upright someone's entire life because she can't have an adult conversation about infidelity really bothered me. It also seriously bothered me that she got away with it and expected and demanded Nick to pretend to be a happy family with her. She not only financially but reproductively (?) blackmailed her husband into staying with her and lying to cover her ass. Knowing your husband is only with you because you got pregnant has got to be the worst feeling ever, but I didn't feel bad for her at all. I mean, is she even capable of emotion?? I did feel bad for Nick. He wasn't lying when he said Amy was the most interesting girl he'd ever met. He just didn't know how much she would fuck up his life.

[neddieb]

This book is an adult version of the movies "the good son", "orphan", "the crush" etc... And the only thing different from those books and this one is that this book has a terrible ending. It has No ending.
The book basically ends with a cliffhanger, the psycho bitch is pregnant and Nick decides to stick around instead of exposing her when he could of easily done so.