Gone Girl

Thank goodness that although I may be a bit late to the party, I didn't miss it entirely.

Honestly, it's hard to even begin to write about Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  Last weekend I absolutely ripped through it.  Like disregarded my regularly scheduled programming and library run, ironically enough.  Someone at work had warned me that this is not the type of book to casually read before drifting off to sleep.  Or over the course of a couple of weeks.

Check and check.  This book is intense.  Hmm....maybe that's not exactly the right word.  It's definitely a page-turner, but that seems too weak an adjective.  It's basically astounding.  How's that?  

I read hundreds of pages at a clip.  It's a little over 400 total, in case you're wondering.  But it didn't seem like it at all.  This is the story of Amy and Nick, a young, married couple who has moved from posh New York City to small-town Missouri to care for his ailing parents.  Although they put on a good front, the pair's marriage is in ruins, and pretty early in the story, something disastrous happens.

This novel is organized like few others I've encountered, moving from his point of view to hers, and told through dialogue, diary entries, and teen-girl-magazine quizzes (just bear with it).  It's more than a mystery or a thriller, I think.  It seems to be a razor-sharp study into the lengths a person could go to really teach someone a lesson.  You just have to decide who that someone is in this book.

I'm not going to give away too much more, except to say that this is a must-read.  You'll be in for some memorable characters, twisted storylines, and even a few (dark) laughs.  As my friend Rachel would say--run, do not walk to get this book.

An example entry from Amy's diary (page 169) reads as follows:

I've got a calendar, and I put hearts on any day Nick seems to love me again, and black squares when he doesn't.  The past year was all black squares, pretty much.