Book Review of “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn.
This novel mirrors some aspects of a familiar tale: girl (Amy) meets boy (Nick), loses contact, reconnects, dates, and marry each other in their 30s. However, the timeline of the novel moves backwards from their 5th anniversary to show the unravelling of their lives. They both lose their jobs as New York writers, move back to his hometown so he can care for his parents, she disappears and frames him for her murder, but she reappears and blames another man for her kidnapping. At the end of the novel, Amy continues to control his life by blackmailing him into staying married.
Amy is the only child to survive after multiple miscarriages and stillbirths. Her parents use her name and life experiences to create the title character of a very profitable book series. She resents her parents for both these situations and feels pressure to be perfect. Though her parents are child psychologists, ironically they do not see that she is mentally ill dating back to her teenage years. Nick is a Mama’s boy and has a close connection to his twin sister, but at times he thinks negatively, and admits he does, about women just like his verbally and emotionally abusive father.
Even though Nick’s voice opens the novel, Amy is the one in control. She is the active one and Nick just reacts to her. She is always intellectually miles ahead of him and that is his downfall.
Amy creates diary entries that are dated back in time to paint herself as an innocent wife who gradually begins to fear her husband. Her diary lays the groundwork for framing him for murder. Outside her diary entries however, Amy admits that for the first 2 years of their marriage, she presented herself as a wife whose greatest happiness was making her husband happy but she could not maintain that facade. Over time, she came to hate Nick for not realizing that she was putting on a front and for acting upset at having to listen to the real Amy. When she saw Nick with his mistress, she decided not to divorce him because that would make life too easy for him. Rather, she would punish him by disappearing and framing him for murder.
Nick tells the reader that he cannot deal with angry, tearful women just like his father. My question: why not? His mother was not the angry one in the marriage – it was her husband. Nick claimed that Amy made him a better man because she expected so much from him (intelligence, consideration, romance) but he could not keep it up so he resented her. Nick realized too late that he mistakenly blamed her completely but that he was partly to blame.
A few questions I would pose to Amy and Nick: did he ever see what was happening to Amy as time went on? Did he see what was happening to their relationship? By the end of the novel, it was obvious that Amy and Nick hated each other but I still wondered why they pretended they were different people when they met each other and dated?
Three characters did not seem to fit with the rest of the novel. Why would Amy befriend 2 people at the hotel where she stayed after disappearing, especially since she was carrying around thousands of dollars in cash? It seems out of character for her. Amy’s friend Desi as described seems gay. Maybe he is just more effeminate than what I expect of a guy who would seek out Amy. He does like to control her, though. Maybe I’m not allowing for a different kind of controlling heterosexual guy.
I am accustomed to reading novels which more gradually build-up to a disastrous ending. Initially, the timeline of the novel frustrated me but then I appreciated it as a creative approach to revealing the unspooling of both a marriage and the individuals.
