Gone Girl (book) Review

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was a riveting and well written book, and could be one of the best thriller works of the 2010's. That being said, I never want to read it again. When I first picked it up, I was prepared for an overhyped book which was strong, but only famous because of the popular movie starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pikes, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry. I was wrong, yes, but I cannot stress enough how much this book has dogged my mind since I finished it about a week before writing this review. So much so that I haven't started reading another book, when my custom was to almost always be reading something.

Perhaps Flynn's greatest strength as a writer is in her dynamic characters, who breath life into her work. The majority of the book is from the perspective of Nick Dunne, as he struggles through the disappearance of his wife. He's a flawed man, and has trouble cooperating with the police, telling small lies which build up later on. Flynn's portrayal of such a man is excellent. He doesn't mean to be so stony and unlikable, but years of marriage and financial trouble, coupled with a broken childhood home, made him incapable of showing his emotions in public, and callous to the media covering his wife's disappearance. In fact, Nick Dunne is so well written that the reader may even begin to suspect him, the clear protagonist, of foul play. I've never seen that before, and it certainly taught me a lot about how to craft a compelling, deep character.

And said wife is just as well written, alternating chapters with her husband, though hers are notably shorter for the most part, due to them being diary entries. She is shown as a wife coping with a husband who seems different than when they first met. She struggles with their age difference (her being about five years older than he, give or take a few), and feels like Nick just doesn't love her anymore. In an interesting duality, Nick feels the same way about Amy. She's a clear portrayal of the American "Cool Girl", and it's tough to see her and Nick's marriage fall into ruin.

The plot is fairly straightforward. On the morning of Nick and Amy's fifth wedding anniversary, Nick wakes up to strange thoughts about his wife's skull, particularly concerning its shape. However, after Nick leaves for work, he's informed that his front door is wide open, and he returns home to see what's happened. Inside his house, he finds a scene consistent with a struggle, and his wife nowhere to be found. Soon a full investigation is launched, and it captures the attention of the whole country. Through Amy's diary, it becomes clear that some of her "alpha" personality traits could be enough to drive anyone up the wall, but they seem to have broken Nick, who begins to lie to the police on their first encounter, and continues lying and hiding in the shadows while pressure mounts from the media and the police. Nick seems evasive of the hard questions, and shows little emotion when dealing with the subject of his missing wife, and there soon begin to be suspicious that the disappearance of Amy Dunne was an inside job.

As far as book plots go, Gone Girl certainly has a good one. There are a lot of twists to be unearthed, and many times where you simply can't put the book down. A "page-turner" indeed. It's fast paced, though there were certain parts where I'll admit I was just waiting for something else to happen, but it never strays from the hearts of the characters, which is something many thriller/suspense books miss: The plot must stay close to the characters if the book is going to be compelling.

Of course, the book isn't without some minor flaws, and I briefly touched on one above; that there are parts of the book which are lackluster in comparison to the others, like a lull in the stream compared to the white water which exists before and after it. I'm not saying that every book has to go 100 mph all the time, but these felt out of place. A good slowdown in the plot can come after a tragedy, or as a moment of love between two characters. Unfortunately the slow downs in Gone Girl seem almost like padding, though they're certainly readable and don't detract from the book much. The greater flaw exists in the big twist which occurs at about the ⅔ point in the book. I won't go into what it is, but it's such a big twist that it feels almost out of the blue, with little to no foreshadowing. Again, not a deal breaker, but I would've preferred if there was maybe a few moments leading up to the twist which foreshadowed it.

So why did I say that I'd never read Gone Girl again, if Flynn has done such a great job with the characters and the plot? Well, it has to do with the ending. Once again, I'm not going to spoil anything, but the ending of the book was just... lacking in any form of justice or catharsis. Don't believe me so naive as to wish for a happy ending in every book; I've read many stories where the protagonists die, or suffer a loss, or are sometimes in just as muddy situations as ever (see The Mist by Stephen King). It's hard to explain why this ending irks me so much, but it truly broke me to read it. It was like wishing for a dog for Christmas, and then opening up a strange, lumpy present to find a dead puppy inside. It left me sour, and wanting to hit one of the characters. So while I wholeheartedly recommend anyone to read Gone Girl, just know that the ending will not be what you expect, and it may affect you just as it has me.