When I finally put down Gone Girl after binge-reading for a solid two days I felt violated. That's the only word I could think of describe how I felt, violated, and maybe a little betrayed.
You would think that this means I'm giving Gillian Flynn's New York Times bestselling novel a bad review. Quite the opposite, this was one of the most captivating books I've read in years.
A brief and spoiler free synopsis: Nick Dunne and Amy Dunne seem like the perfect married couple to the outside world. Amy Comes from a very wealthy family whose fortune comes from a book series based off of Amy as a child. Nick Came from humble and somewhat dysfunctional beginnings. Nick moves to New York City and becomes a fairly successful writer, it is there that he meets Amy. After a few years of wedded bliss in the city Nick's mother falls ill and Amy and Nick must move back to his hometown of North Carthrage, Missouri. Cracks in Amy and Nick's marriage are starting to show when Nick comes home on their 5th wedding anniversary to find Amy has disappeared.
The Novel is split between Nick's own in-the-now narration of the investigation into the disappearance of his wife and diary entries of Amy's. This synopsis does not do the book justice, in fact no synopsis would do this book justice unless it were able to tell you about the enormous twist in this book that makes it so unique.
I'm not going to do that because then you would not get to experience this book the way I did and that's exactly what this book is, an experience. The novel centers around the suspicion that Nick Dunne is Amy's killer. Gillian Flynn somehow creates a world in which even though we are privy to these characters private thoughts, we don't know who to trust.
As the reader we can't quite make our minds up. We discover one bit of information about Nick that leads us to believe that he is, without a doubt, the culprit. On the next page we feel he can never have done something so heinous. We read Amy's diary and she seems like the perfect wife just trying to make her marriage work no matter what. Then, why does the way Nick describe Amy not seem to match up with the Amy we know?
Much like watching one of these cases play out in the news, opinion can shift quickly.
Of course having a novel with complex characters is not anything new, having a novel that doesn't have complex characters would be a pretty shitty novel. However, Gone Girl takes the suspense/thriller genre to a whole new level.
It's not only Nick and Amy that are unreliable but also a whole cast of characters from the past that are inherently suspect. Nick's Dementia ridden, woman hating father seems a pretty obvious choice. Of course with the fame of Amy's childhood book persona she has had fans that were a tad bit more than enthusiastic. Then, there's Amy's high school boyfriend Desi who took their break up harder than she expected and whom still writes Amy letters to this day.
Gillian Flynn's Masterful way of keeping the reader in a constant state of doubt culminates in a twist that is too unexpected to guess. The novel does not end there, even after having the reality of Gone Girl cracked wide open the reader is forced to keep going.
With characters that are equal parts, fascinating, brilliant, and detestable Gone Girl proves there truly are two sides to every story.
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