Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

I’m not usually one for crime thrillers in either book, tv, or film form.  I generally find them to be rather samey, a mite predictable, and written by people with little-to-no actual experience of the things about which they are writing.  Occasionally though I break this fast, and when I do I generally find that it is rather brilliant.  Gone Baby Gone , Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and LA Confidential are some examples of the best parts of the genre.  When I first read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I thought that I had surely read the best crime novel that I would read.  I was wrong.

So much has been said about Gillian Flynn’s outstanding third book Gone Girl that it almost seems perfunctory to add to the huge expanse of praise being heaped upon it – but I am going to do so anyway.   After bingeing on this book it has rarely left my mind, and I could talk about it for  as long as the rain outside falls.  The really difficult thing is working out where to begin!

The premise of the book appears to be a classic missing-wife case.  The man, Nick, opens the book by relating how he discovered that his wife had gone missing on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary.  The second chapter then consists of an entry from his wife Amy’s diary relating how she met her future husband and these dual narratives eventually meet in the present.  This is not highly original, but I have never seen it accomplished with such skill.

I said earlier that this was a ‘classic missing-wife case’, but there is nothing predictable about it.  I found that a few of the twists and turns are rather telegraphed in the promotion of the book – even the back cover copy contains rather more plot points than I would like – so I am going to give you the bare bones here.  The central characters of the book, Nick and Amy, are two people that never should have married.  They are in essence: bad people, with personalities that were never going to coalesce, married for the wrong reasons, in a bad situation in their personal and professional lives.  The façade of the perfect marriage is shaky and falls apart on the merest pressure.

These main characters are beautifully developed and revealed through the story.  The impression that you have of them changes from chapter to chapter as the seeming perfect-wife Amy is revealed to be a spoilt, scheming brat and the noble Nick is shown to be the weak, damaged and compliant man he always was.  Flynn’s skill is in allowing you to make notions of who these people are and then just as you do so, revealing another facet which changes your perception.  It is a truly remarkable example of how one constructs character in fiction.

This story is disturbing – distressing at times – and some of the questions it raises and issues it digs up stay with you for a long time.  It’s one of those books that you devour in a single sitting and consider long after finishing.  I cannot remember the last time that I was quite so perturbed and fascinated by something so impressively written.

9/10

Favourite Quotes

“My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.” 

“Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.” 

“I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.” 

“She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment - that just anyone could like you.”