Gone Girl
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
★★★★☆
You know this book. You know the cool girl monologue. Did you know it only happens halfway into the book, on Page 222, not even at the beginning of the chapter? I didn’t know that.
It gets the 4th star mostly for being aggressively readable. Is that enough of a reason? I wasn’t wowed by the writing, because I had sky-high expectations going in + knew the general idea of the plot.
The decision to make both narrators unlikable characters was novel and interesting for the time, as was making Amy a villain. Female villain protagonists are an underused concept!
I only made three notes while reading. These are the other two:
“Sounds to me like she was a spoiled rich girl,” Greta says. “High-maintenance. Bitchy.”
That is simply unfair. I’d left no evidence for anyone to conclude that.
Page 265.
This was notable for how well it summarized Part Two Amy’s personality. She’s evil! She planned all this! And she’s still an unreliable narrator!
Here’s a crack theory:
Okay, Amy’s parents had impossible standards for her and helped create the monster. Whatever, lame, boring, everyone thinks this.
But what if they’re both psychopaths who are extra good at hiding it? Amy has a pretty negative view of them. Nick, on the other hand, never even suspects them. Why would he? He didn’t suspect Amy at first. He’s not in close contact with them. And they’ve had decades longer to get it right. The fact that they’re still publicly so in love with each other after decades is, I feel, damning.
The Amazing Amy and personality quiz parts were cool. I never saw those parts mentioned in pop culture Gone Girl discussions.
More word padding: During this book, I decided to come up with a new reading system. I’d read two books in parallel. An interesting one and a boring one.
The interesting one is for reading during mealtimes, in the car, while waiting, etc. The boring one is when I have sustained time dedicated to reading. 25+ minutes, because that’s a pomodoro. Bedtime and afternoons in the sun. Alas, this book was too interesting, and the boring book too boring. I finished Gone Girl in two days and the Sun Tzu book took a whole month.
End of padding, end of post.