Gone Girl

A Novel

By: Gillian Flynn

Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Kirby Heyborne

Length: 19 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships” (Lev Grossman, Time)—now featuring never-before-published deleted scenes

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY TIME AND ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • People • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • Slate • Kansas City Star • USA Today • Christian Science Monitor

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Chicago Tribune • HuffPost • Newsday

©2012 Gillian Flynn (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Absorbing . . . In masterly fashion, Flynn depicts the unraveling of a marriage—and of a recession-hit Midwest—by interweaving the wife’s diary entries with the husband’s first-person account.”—The New Yorker

“Ms. Flynn writes dark suspense novels that anatomize violence without splashing barrels of blood around the pages . . . Ms. Flynn has much more up her sleeve than a simple missing-person case. As Nick and Amy alternately tell their stories, marriage has never looked so menacing, narrators so unreliable.”—The Wall Street Journal

“The story unfolds in precise and riveting prose . . . even while you know you’re being manipulated, searching for the missing pieces is half the thrill of this wickedly absorbing tale.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Feelings

I’m the type that laughed at Fargo. So this was awesome. Please tell me there is more.

Interesting story, but much longer than it needed to be.

The story has a nice twist. It is an interesting relationship. I like that it went back-and-forth between the two main characters. However, in my opinion, it was way longer than it needed to be to complete the story effectively. I finished it, but I considered not finishing it. I also considered to stop listening and just watch the movie version.

Gone girl

Enjoyed this book. I will continue to read others by this author. Great writing by her

I don’t see what all the hype is about

Several of the books I have read and enjoyed have been compared to this one, either in the title details or ratings, usually with something similar to “not as good as Gone Girl, but…”. So I finally decided I need to read Gone Girl. I must say, I’m disappointed. It’s good, but entirely too long and drawn out, and the ending was highly unsatisfying. It took a long time for me to really get into it. The narrators are excellent, but the story is just ok.

Thought I Would be Moved, but Not Impressed

Not as impressive or engaging as I recalled from watching the movie a decade ago.

So fun!

Oh my gosh, I loved every minute of listening to this one. It was fun & twisty & kept me wanting to know what happens next. It’s fluff, but it’s really fun fluff.

Great twists!

The characters are deep and interesting. The story is unpredictable and fascinating. I highly recommend reading it!

Something New Under the Summer Sun!

This book is interesting on several levels. On one, the reader is introduced to current methods of publicity damage control including blogs and interviews with talking heads with a slick lawyer heading the team. On another level, Flynn gradually reveals the inner workings of a pathological marriage. Although I was not sure of who I wanted to "win" until about the middle of the book, I wanted to know more. I did not love the ending, but this is a book I will remember and recommend.

The Shallow End of the Pool

I tried to like this story and I gave it 3 stars because I finished it. There are few books that make better movies---this is one.

The only mystery was how far the author was going to stretch reality. The premise is decent. But things get stretched far beyond the breaking point. Our heroine meets up with a sleazy pair at her hiding place. They watch the story of the woman's death and disappearance (they are separately handled) on TV but never make the connection? These two never make the connection even after she returns to the spotlight? And, I suppose it's kiss and make up is good enough with the police? They drop the whole thing? And rich dead guy? No dots to connect there.

Well, I saw the movie on TV and found it far more engaging than the book.

I'll give it this. The book is popular and many people like it. You may. I did not.

A dark, fun ride

Gone Girl is 2012's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, that gritty suspense thriller that everyone and their mother was reading. For the first half, it sucked me in with well-drawn characters, a setup that has its fingers on the pulse of the times, and a delicious sense of Hitchcockian misdirection.

The two narrators are Nick and Amy, a thirty-something pair of would-be yuppies whose magazine careers and New York City lives were derailed by the Great Recession. They have now downsized their dreams to the Midwest, characterized as the home of corn chip casseroles, bland earnestness, and shopping at Walmart. There, Nick took care of his ailing parents and opened a bar with the last of Amy's trust fund money. And, there, their marriage fell apart.

Starting from page one, we get Nick's side of things: a perpetually unsatisfied wife and a life that seems to be going nowhere. Then, on their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving behind signs of a struggle and a trail of clues in the form of an anniversary scavenger hunt. Nick blinks and stumbles his way through the ensuing police investigation, and there's the sense that he's not telling us everything.

Interspersed with Nick's narrative are journal entries from Amy, painting a picture of a fairytale marriage that sours after a husband stops trying. And there's just a hint of control freak insecurity, perhaps triggered in part by being the inspiration for the goody-two-shoes protagonist of a series of saccharine children's books written by Amy's own parents over the decades, the source of her small family fortune.

It doesn't take long before the reader gets the sense that Nick, while somewhat evasive and not exactly the husband of the year, is falling into a trap. Clues in the investigation and public opinion are going against him.

Then comes a twist, and we learn that a few things about Nick and Amy’s marriage have been misrepresented. Here, the novel began to get unbelievable for me, though the suspense remained enjoyable. Would Nick be arrested? How would his sleazeball lawyer, his media appearances, his oddball sister, Amy's wealthy, creepy ex-boyfriend, a deranged father, and a couple of desperate types in a short-term housing park play into the plot? As Nick's defenses steadily crumble around him, against a far craftier opponent, Flynn keeps us guessing, even rooting for a guy who was initially hard to like.

When the story reaches its endgame, it escalates into pure absurdity, a sort of screw-turning, Stephen King-like nightmare scenario (think of him in suspense mode, not monster mode). Somewhere, a few psychologists are doing face palms. But, if you're willing to shut off your brain, it's fun, in a deliciously dark way.

All in all, this novel showed a lot of promise for roughly the first half. Flynn obviously *reads*, and has a sense of craft. I loved the unreliable narrators and the ambiguity. Unfortunately, though, once the game is revealed, the novel morphs steadily into airport bookstore territory. This isn't necessarily bad, but I'd hoped for a bit more psychological complexity. Oh well.

The two audiobook narrators are good. Kirby Heyborne, who performs Nick's parts, ranges from bemused calm to barely suppressed anger. Julia Whelan, who takes Amy's, has a girlish chipperness that works well.