REVIEW: Gone Girl : Gillian Flynn

Regardless of what I think of Gone Girl, it is a true credit to Gillian Flynn that I have felt so emotionally involved in this book that I’ve felt the need to write about it. But – MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT. I completely reveal the plot below, so if you are reading it or planning to read it, don’t read all my nonsense below until afterwards.

I happened across Gone Girl in Waterstones a week or so ago when I was browsing for something to spend some Christmas vouchers on. I’d not heard of it, nor was I particularly grabbed by the cover, but the ‘Thriller of the year’ quote from the Observer on the front was enough to make me pick it up. I am a sucker for a good thriller. I am also a sucker for good editing, and the cleverley written blurb got my good-book-juices-flowing, and everyone loves a bit of good-book-juice.

Now. My relationship with this book is difficult. If it had a Facebook status, it would likely be ‘It’s Complicated.’ I don’t in anyway regret buying it or reading it; I couldn’t put it down. Page after page I was gripped and drawn further into it, shamlessly gasping aloud at plot developments, repeatedly slapping my hand against my head in horror at unexepcted turns of events. I consumed it as fast as the story consumed me. But – did I enjoy it? I don’t know.

Let me break it down. I am in complete awe of Flynn’s writing for the first three quarters of the novel; she shaped and moulded my opinion differently with each chapter. I started out indifferent to both Amy and Nick, not quite understanding their marital situation, only just bothering to care, more concerned with the suspected murder. Soon I found myself in deep sympathy with the missing Amy, who’s bastard husband had forced her away from her friends, from her family, from the city that she loved and thrived in, only to spend all her money and have an affair with – brace yourself for the cliche – one of his pretty little students.

I despised Nick. The chapters taken from Amy’s diary made my heart beat faster with unaldulterated anger towards him. I forgot I was reading the lives of fictional characters and believed I was reading the diary of a woman whose husband was ruining her life. And then, I’d turn a page, read a chapter from Nick’s perspective, and be thrown again. Could this man really have murdered his wife simply because, from his point of view, their marriage had not gone quite to plan?

At the half way point, Flynn has me right where she wants me. Diary Amy, as she is later referred to, has tried to buy a gun because she is scared of Nick. Nick is seeing visions of his wife on the kitchen floor, covered in blood, and he’s repeatedly lying to the police. He’s killed her, right? He’s a psycho with a split personality and everything is pointing to the fact he’s murdered his wife. Right.

Wrong. I turn the page and in one short line I’m knocked backwards with the revelation that Amy is alive. I’m just recovering from this to discover Diary Amy was a fake. Every diary entry I’d read spanning the length of her relationship with Nick, everything I’d found myself drawn into, emotionally involved in, was created by her character to frame her husband. I feel betrayed by Flynn, but in the best way possible. She’s tricked her readers on all levels, and I’m floored by the extent of her genius, her clever writing and plot development. Amy knows about the affair, Amy knows about everything and its payback time. My hatred for Nick still burning bright, I’m sucked into her game and want her to win, until it registers with me that I’ve been duped. I have no concrete evidence of what is real and what Amy has created. I am practically back to square one, I know nothing about this young woman I have sympathised with for two hundred and forty three pages. As a result, everything I think I know about Nick is erased. Flynn has manipulated me in the same way that Amy has manipulated everyone and everything around her. At this point, I’m still thinking – genius. I’m thinking this is the best goddamn book I have ever freaking read.

Sadly, that is probably the last good thing I have to say about Gone Girl. As Amy reveals the extent of her lies, things become completely ridiculous. I don’t know whether Flynn was relying on her reader to be so sucked in at this point that she could get away with the transition from thriller to complete fantasy, or whether she is purposefully offering an extreme exaggeration of a woman scorned. Like a warning to men everywhere: hey buddy, spend your wife’s money and cheat on her, and you’ll find yourself framed for a murder you didn’t commit, hated by the nation and facing the death penalty. SO KEEP YOUR WILLY IN YOUR PANTS. Did Flynn want women everywhere to rejoice at Amy’s brilliance? Her calm, meticulous planning in the face of her husband’s scandal. Her determination after finding out her husband is shagging someone younger, prettier and more carefree than her, to not only shame him with the fact he’s been found out, but to make sure he DIES for his actions. I mean really, REALLY?! Don’t get me wrong, Flynn makes no doubt of the fact Amy is a sociopath. She’s got history with this sort of thing, she’d just upped her game because her husband cheated on her. But I still can’t buy it, and I’m losing any sort of hold I had on the purpose of the story.

The ending is simply insulting. There is no other way to describe it. All the brilliance of the first part of the book is erased by the way Flynn brings it to a close. The supposedly strong-minded, deeply scorned Amy (who on reflection, by the way, is a spoilt, ungrateful little bitch) ends up running back to Nick because he said something nice about her in a TV interview. I am not even playing that down – he appears on a TV show to trick her back to him so that he can prove what she has done, says that he wants her to come back so he can be the husband she has always wanted, and she FALLS FOR IT. This woman, who has spent months planning the demise of her cheating, miserable husband, hears a few nice words about herself and crumbles back into his arms. What sort of a representation of women is that? Not only do we apparently turn into off-the-radar nutters when something bad happens, we lose all sense of pride and resolve at the muttering of a compliment. And Nick, ultimately pathetic and so desperate not to become his women-hating father, takes back the woman who had put every fibre of her being into sending him to deathrow. Oh, and did I mention she murdered a man while she was pretending to be dead? But its okay, because she got out of it by ‘abusing herself with a wine bottle every day’ to make it look like he raped her.

So Nick and Amy live happily ever after. They even have a baby, which Amy made possible by having Nick’s sperm implanted into herself at a clinic, because they aren’t sleeping together. They aren’t sleeping together because she’s a terrifying murderess. That bit I can understand, at least. But where did Amy get Nick’s sperm from? From a clinic in which he conveniently deposited sperm a while back. Another contradiction in terms. Independent Amy, off to the sperm clinic to do the job herself because Nick isn’t man enough to do it for her. Yet the ultimate goal – get pregnant to keep him, make him stay with her, trap him because she can’t be without him. The whole idea sends my head into spiralling confusion.

I can just about grasp the concept of them getting back together – Flynn writes an impossible love story of two people who are so well suited, so well connected that they can manipulate the other into ruination with mere words. Nick can’t live without Amy because no one will compare to her brilliance, no one will know him the way she does. And Amy can’t live without Nick because no one will understand her need for the Perfect Husband, for the Perfect Life. Okay, fine, I can just about grasp that.

It just wasn’t quite the ending I was hoping for throughout the whole gripping, twisting and thrilling tale. What was I hoping for? Of that I am unsure, but feel it is the author’s responsibility to deliver it and for me, she didn’t quite do it this time.