{"id":653,"date":"2012-07-17T13:45:53","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T19:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=653"},"modified":"2012-07-17T13:45:53","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T19:45:53","slug":"gillian-flynn-gone-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/gillian-flynn-gone-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

I think it\u2019s safe to say this is the book of the year, and there isn\u2019t always a \u201cbook of the year\u201d, a book everyone\u2019s talking about and reading.\u00a0 But the premise and the voice in this book are so original and so captivating that the story will probably stay with you for a long, long time, and you\u2019ll probably want to talk about it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The author is definitely channeling psychological masters like Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith.\u00a0 Putting together this lean, vicious, compelling book is a real act of writerly fortitude, because it\u2019s an exhausting and sometimes terrible sprint.\u00a0 And, like a Rendell or Highsmith book, when you get to the twisty middle, you know things are only going to get far, far worse.<\/p>\n

Flynn, a former writer for Entertainment Weekly<\/em>, is keenly aware of pop culture and uses the details of modern life perfectly. She\u2019s also used a premise for her story that\u2019s literally ripped from the headlines.\u00a0 As the book opens, we meet Nick, wife of Amy.\u00a0 Amy has disappeared, and Nick had come back to find her gone, their living room torn apart.\u00a0 It\u2019s their fifth wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

As the story moves forward, the author switches from Nick\u2019s voice to Amy\u2019s \u2013 Nick recounting the present, Amy speaking from her diary, dating back several years and moving forward.\u00a0 Nick and Amy Dunne had begun married life as a charmed couple \u2013 both beautiful and successful, both writers, Amy also had her own money from a series of wildly successful children\u2019s books her parents have written, based on her.<\/p>\n

In short order the bottom falls out \u2013 Amy and Nick lose their jobs as journalists, her parents lose their book contract and most of their money, and the couple moves from a swanky Manhattan brownstone back to Nick\u2019s boyhood home of Carthage, Missouri, where Nick\u2019s mom is dying of cancer, Nick\u2019s dad has Alzheimer\u2019s, and Nick buys a bar with the last bit of Amy\u2019s money. He runs the bar with his sister, Go.<\/p>\n

As Amy\u2019s disappearance stretches out things begin to look very bad for Nick.\u00a0 As a reader you are inside his head and you can\u2019t tell \u2013 is he guilty?\u00a0 Is he innocent? Where is Amy?\u00a0 Is she dead? Even Nick\u2019s beloved twin sister isn\u2019t sure.\u00a0 Nick and Amy\u2019s parents are constantly swarmed by reporters as the hunt for Amy amps up \u2013 with all it\u2019s attendant paraphernalia \u2013 press conferences, a \u201cFind Amy\u201d tip line and headquarters, and a few crazies coming out of the woodwork here and there.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not even sure where the author stands on the Midwest vs. the East Coast \u2013 she certainly delineates both precisely, but you are left to sort through your feelings for yourself.\u00a0 The details of both are lovingly described, but the desperation of the folks in the economically bludgeoned Carthage is heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s a huge twist in the story about half way through.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to give it away, but this explication of a marriage, beginning with love and devolving into something else, is completely gripping.\u00a0 Amy and Nick\u2019s manipulation of one another is maybe only a matter of degree, and that\u2019s what\u2019s so terrible about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a few notches up (or down) from \u201cnormal\u201d.<\/p>\n

Whatever your feelings are at the end of the book \u2013 and I admit, I was pretty creeped out by the time I finished it \u2013 you certainly won\u2019t be able to put it down, or forget it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it\u2019s safe to say this is the book of the year, and there isn\u2019t always a \u201cbook of the year\u201d, a book everyone\u2019s talking about and reading.\u00a0 But the premise and the voice in this book are so original and so captivating that the story will probably stay with you for a long, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-psychological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}