I can’t believe I haven’t written a review for Gone Girl yet. How do these things happen to me? Oh, that’s right, TWD obsession. Well, fear not my friends. The time has come. Gillian Flynn sure does know how to pull the feelings from you, doesn’t she?
Amy and Nick are a thirty-something married couple who’ve hit some financial and family trouble. They are now back in his small Missouri hometown, and we open on the morning of their 5th wedding anniversary. The narrative shifts back and forth between Nick present day and Amy’s diary from the beginning of their relationship. Because Amy’s gone missing and it doesn’t look good. We go from there.
The film trailer was released a few weeks ago, and so I knew I had to get on reading Flynn’s latest and greatest. I refused to even watch the preview before I’d read the book. GG was a huge darling a couple of years ago and fell victim to the hype monster, which means I refused to read it until things had calmed. While I waited, I read her first two novels – Sharp Objects and Dark Places. One I loved; the other I liked.
Gone Girl is a whole other thing. What impressed me so much about Sharp Objects were the risks Flynn was willing to take, particularly in making people nasty and the imagery even worse. She had a grit and a bluntness to her work that was able to shock even me. GG is different in its way but not any less shocking. But this time, she’s focused primarily on making you hate all of the people just because they are shitty people. The worst, really. You think someone can be redeemed and then shit just falls apart. You will want to punch everyone and fling the book across the room, but you will not be able to stop reading. And that’s the pleasure of Gone Girl. It grabs you, shakes you, and won’t stop until you’ve turned the last page.
Was the novel perfect? No. Personally, I had moments where I wondered what was the point, you know? All those pages just to see the lengths people will go to out-do one another. To see how shitty we can be at the core of who we are. To see how much our childhood or rearing can fuck us up? To just play with the audience like we’re the mouse and Flynn’s the cat? But it’s one hell of a ride so who cares?
The Blog of Litwits 
I haven’t tried any of Flynn’s books besides Gone Girl because it gave me the icks. Not even the normal, expected icks, but just the “this writing is only sensational what’s the fucking point?” icks.
I rad Gone Girl almost as soon as it was published and loved it – I think your last line captures it best: “But it’s one hell of a ride, so who cares?”. You read that thing purely for the ride…and it’s quite a ride. After GG, I read Dark Places and hated it. It was too dark for me and I was missing the smartness and wittiness of Nick and Amy (you’ve got to admit, they were both “smart”)!
Great review!
I found Sharp Objects a bit too dark to be enjoyable, but I’m considering giving this a try anyway. For all that I didn’t love Sharp Objects, I thought it was very well written and it was certainly edgy and different, so I think it’s worth it to me to try another of her books just to push myself outside my comfort zone 🙂
Oh Gone Girl. Your review made me go back and look what I thought of it. I thought it became totally crazy and unreal, yet still I read on. So as you say, who cares? I checked out the movie trailer just now, and ugh why do they use the song “She” which was used prominently in the movie Notting Hill. The same song! Blah. Here’s my review from last year http://www.thecuecard.com/node/756
One hell of a ride is right! I don’t normally do dysfunction…at least not on that level…and I keep hearing her others are even more so. Think I’ll stick to the movies!
Gone Girl is a pretty thoroughly dysfunctional story (or rather story of dysfunctionals, I suppose would be better…). I was incredibly irritated by the journal entries–I tend not to like books written as journals–but got over that by the end. I didn’t quite hate GG as much as Andi did, but I’ve never quite felt the urge to pick up any of her other books.
Ugh. I had this recommended to me recently, and I’m usually pretty open to whatever is recommended, but I have a really low tolerance for anything with the sole purpose of just upsetting me. I think I’ll have to pass on this one for now. Thanks for the review!
I was really planning to read Gone Girl. But I’ve seen so many not pleased reviews. Still,it looks really intrigueing to me, Anyway, I should probably get down to it,right?
Cora
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