Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – A Book Review

             At what length would you go to prove your point, to punish, to win?

Boy meets girl

Well, this initial half of the book felt to me, more like reading ‘Men are from Mars and Women from Venus’, through a woman’s heart though. Why he behaves the way he does, why she should act when he does what he isn't supposed to do, why it is better to accept and let go of certain ways and mannerisms and childishness and manliness of the gender M. She loves him for a reason, she cannot resist him. He makes her laugh, he gives her space and so does she, Amy Dunne is happy being Mrs. Nick Dunne and not ‘Amazing Amy’. Amazing Amy? A character created by the perfect couple, the soul mates, her parents; a best seller. Since her childhood, Amazing Amy has had a conscious imposition on Amy’s life, but with Nick, life is different, she is herself, not a character from a book. And so what if they both have lost their jobs and have had to leave the limelight of New York to beat the recession and move into the quite neighborhood of Nick’s town to stay with his ailing mother; she is coping with all of this and what is important is that she has Nick by her side. Nick and his sister have bought and are running ‘The Bar’ with her money.

Amy writes a diary; all her happy moments with Nick are there. But Nick has been behaving unlike him lately, she is afraid of him; she wants to buy a gun!

And then on their fifth anniversary, as Nick returns home, the front door is open, the house is in disarray, there is an evidence of a struggle and Amy is gone!

Boy loses Girl

            

          Amy’s disappearance sets Nick on a treasure hunt that she has devised for him. A punishing treasure hunt, a cunning one. For some time, he repents having treated his wife wrongfully when he discovers clue after clue, letter after letter, the wonderful thoughts that his wife has had for him. But are the letters what they are, is his comprehension of them right? Everything is going against Nick. Why did Amy want to buy a gun? Amy is pregnant. His neighbour who he thought never spoke to Amy confirms that he tortures her and wants to kill her and their unborn child. His infidelity is discovered. His credit card transactions show costly items he never bought and like magic they appear in his sisters’ shed. Thinks get murkier as time passes. Stories she had told about her stalkers are horrific lies and all that the associated people from those incidents can do are run, run, run like hell...away, away, far away from her. No need for revenge; they have been bitten so badly and fear her so much that they cannot think remotely of revenge.

            So what does poor Nick do? He plays along Amy’s game not knowing if she is dead or alive. He laments in public about her disappearance and how much he loves his wife and how he has wronged her and wants her back to correct things. So is Amy dead or alive? Is she pregnant? Is her diary a hoax? So who is Nick’s wife, Amy or Amazing Amy? Was their life a consciously devised manipulative game, devised by her all the time? Has she let him have his way at times to win this sadistic war for proving she is, was always right? Find out, there is an uglier truth lying there.

I meet Gone Girl

            At what length would you go to prove your point, to punish, to win?

Amy’s mind is a shithole. It terrified, terrifies me that a person can live all her life as a game just to prove she is right. Creepy! How can you choose to fall in love, year after year, live a fictitious happy life with the only purpose to make someone else’s miserable? Can be understood in the case of revenge, but otherwise how? Why? It is mental sickness alright? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – yes, yes, yes! Would you fear Amy or someone like her less than the deadliest of murderers? I hated Amy of course, but I hated Nick more in the end for his imbecility, for the erratic meaningless choice that he made; sounded not only silly but obnoxious to me but this is Gillian Flynn’s (she is a beauty, isn't she?) story not mine and she wanted Amy to win, I guess. The story evolves in the second half and you have to give it to Gillian Flynn to have been able to devise a horrendous character with such a sick mind. The fourth star is for making me realize such things do happen. This would definitely prove to be an encouraging book for all misogynists.

This definitely needs to be read by all married men and more importantly needs to be kept away from their better/bitter halves. All I remember when I think of Amy is what Nick’s dad says: Fuckinbitch fuckinbitch fuckinbitch fuckinbitch

Definitely want to watch the movie

My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 7/10

Gillian Flynn