Gone Girl Review

Title: Gone Girl
Author: Gillian Flynn
Date Purchased: 4/23/16
Price Paid: $5.34
Date Finished: 2/21/21
Rating: 4/5

I’ve read a lot of books in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of movies. As you might imagine, some of the movies I’ve seen were based on, or adaptations of, books that I’ve read. The “was the book better than the movie” debate is one that I’ve engaged in many times. But the order was always the same: I had read the book, and then I saw the movie.

As I prepared to write this review I did a lot of thinking, and I mean a lot. Have I ever read the book after seeing the movie? I know I’ve revisited books after seeing the movie adaptation, but I struggled to remember a book that I picked up as a result of seeing a film. Maybe High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I love that movie (and really liked the short-lived Hulu show), I owned the book at one point, I just don’t know if I ever read the book.

I know, without a doubt, that I saw the movie Gone Girl before I owned the book. And before I get into the book, and what I thought of it, let’s hop in the Wayback Machine and talk about how Laura and I came to watch the movie.

It was August of 2015, and life was a bit on the turbulent side. I was a month and a half into a new job (which I hated) and Laura and I were planning our wedding, which was just over a month away. So between work stress and home stress, there was just no end to the anxiety.

One night, as we were leaving the grocery store, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. As that’s typically a bad sign, we rushed home, put the groceries away, and headed to the emergency room.

For whatever reason, the ER was pretty busy that night and we had a significant wait until they could even process me through their intake procedures. Once they did I was given the lovely news that my blood pressure was 171/100…which was alarming.

Skipping ahead several hours, they were able to determine that I did not have a heart attack…it was just acute hypertension, most likely caused by stress. As they discharged me the doctor said “you might want to take a night and just relax.” So, that next night, we rented a movie with the intention of doing just that – relaxing.

We rented Gone Girl.

Oops.

I remember thinking that under normal circumstances we would have enjoyed the movie, but it wasn’t “relaxing” by any stretch of the imagination. But whenever I talked about the movie, people were quick to let me know that the book was “SO much better”. So when that Amazon deals email came through and this was on sale, I had to see for myself.

Armed with a time-dulled knowledge of the plot, I finally dove in.

The story is not a relaxing one – a husband comes home to find his wife missing, with signs of an apparent struggle in their home. Once the story unfolds a bit more layers develop as we get to know both the husband, through his first-person narration, and the wife, through her diary entries.

Even though this book has been out for quite a while, I’m a little hesitant to go into further details as there are several twists. I will say that they are quite well done, and Flynn does an excellent job of keeping the reader on their toes.

So, instead, I will discuss aspects of this book in the vaguest terms possible, which may or may not be helpful.

When looking at the plot, we see a fairly boilerplate mystery novel on the surface: wife disappears, husband is suspected, he claims that he is innocent…that old chestnut. That story has been told 1,000 times, and I’m sure there were twists and turns that featured in those novels as well.

The difference here is the constant switching of narration between Nick (the husband) and Amy (the missing wife), or more to the point, Amy’s diary. We see events unfold from her disappearance on through Nick’s eyes, and Amy’s diary takes us forward from the time of their meeting. It’s an interesting way to get to know the characters, and ties much of the second half of the book together.

As for the characters? Well, that’s a fascinating subject. I can honestly say that I’ve never read a book where I’ve hated almost every character in the story and still found it to be an enjoyable experience. And to almost the last character, these are a bunch of asshats.

Okay, that’s probably being harsh. Some of the minor characters are fine, or at the very least only tainted by their relationship to one or more of the major characters. But as the story progresses the main characters tend to get dragged down, by their own actions, into a miasma of unpleasantness.

The end result of this, at least for me, is a book where you really don’t have anyone to root for. Usually when there’s a conflict in a story you have a clear idea of which side you’re pulling for, but not here. If anything, it was a “lesser of two evils” situation.

All of this added up to a very enjoyable read, and one I would highly recommend to any fan of mystery/suspense novels. Part of me is tempted to go back and watch the movie again, but maybe it’s better that I’m left with these memories instead of ones involving a hospital bed.

Final Thoughts: Well worth the read, and I’m glad I was able to experience this book. I’ll gladly check out any other Gillian Flynn novels.