You
know that feeling you get when you find a $5 bill in your pocket? Well, reading Gone Girl is sort of like
that—only instead of finding $5, you find $100. No, I'm not exaggerating. It really is that awesome. However, it's a suspense novel so I will tread carefully while articulating its amazing-ness (you're welcome).
On
one side, you’ve got Nick. He’s a pretty average guy who’s married to Amy. They
moved from New York City when they lost their jobs (him: a journalist, her: a writer who make quizzes you find in magazines aka The Best Job Ever) and ended up in Nick’s somewhat rural hometown. Nether is particularly psyched about it but Nick
uses the last of their money to buy a bar with his twin sister and they try to
make the best of things.
Then,
there’s Amy—a character who is used to getting what she wants. Add rest assured, moving from the city to the pseudo-country to spend her days without much to do isn't something that Amy would ever have chosen. Amy’s chapters are
written like diary entries, (while Nick’s happen in the present) so it’s easy
to put yourself in her shoes and it was sweet to read about the beginning of their
relationship from Amy’s point-of-view. My heart went out to her when things started to go badly on the job-front but Amy was an optimist at heart and I felt a strong connection with her effort in seeing the silver linings.
For
the first part of Gone Girl, you learn about how Nick and Amy ended up moving from NYC and then, Amy goes missing, on the day of
their five-year wedding anniversary. Mounting
evidence points to Nick and suddenly, a ho-hum story is cranked up to an 11. And then…THEN, you get metaphorically kicked in the face with awesome.
This
plot is bananas, guys--crazy, insane, you’ve-got-to-be-freaking-kidding-me
bananas.
I
literally had no idea what was going to happen from one chapter to the next.
One of the ultimate goals of authors is to make it impossible for the reader to
find a place to put the book down and on that front, Ms. Flynn is a master--of the Jedi variety.
And
I know that because when I was almost halfway through, The Remix’s iPad died. Normally, I’d just
plug it in to charge and read later but after sitting on the couch for a very long seven minutes, I grabbed a pillow and huddled up on the floor, next to the outlet while The Remix stared at me like
I’d lost my mind (which is really the only appropriate way to look at your wife-y when she's camped out in the corner of your
living room and refuses to go to bed even though it’s really, really late).
Nicely done, Gillian Flynn. Nicely done.
*claps*
Look,
I can’t say much more than I’ve said because spoilers are the worst. Especially
with books like Gone Girl. Jennifer Weiner has gone on record saying that Gone
Girl is one of the best books she’s ever read and, frankly, that’s probably an
understatement. So if you like books where you have no choice but to exclaim
aloud when the story screeches around a hairpin turn, then Gone Girl
is for you.
Read it, people.
Read it now!
And I can't wait to talk about it on Sunday with my book club, as this really is the kind of book you want to chat about. Hopefully my computer works this time! *crosses fingers*
