‘Gone Girl’ provides extraordinary mystery

Gone Girl is an extraordinary novel. A happily married woman, Amy, customarily sets up an anniversary present for her husband, Nick, in a place and of a nature that represents some echo of their marriage, writing a rhyming poem with obscure clues in it as to where she’s hidden her gift.

This is their fifth, and she does it again. But then she disapears, leaving behind a messed up living room, and though we don’t know it yet, some blood on the floor somewhat messily cleaned up. Suspicion, of course is set up to fall on Nick, with whom she has fallen out of love.

This is a mystery… that is to the other characters in the novel who don’t know where she is – or whether she’s alive or dead. But the reader does, because the chapters alternate between Amy and Nick’s points of view: inner voices and outer action. WE know all, but they don’t.

Each heading is made up of the number of days she’s been missing, or, perhaps, jottings from her diary – which is completely made up. Amy is incredibly smart and a very careful planner.

Nick and Amy have moved to Hannibal, Mo., Nick’s home town, both having lost their jobs in New York City. Nick and his sister buy a bar, and at first, Amy and Nick are really happy, though the entries about the New York days aren’t always loving.

Amy supplies the money. (Did he marry her for her money, she wonders?)

While Amy has the ability to change herself into several kinds of women, she reports he is scornful of her attempts to fit into a Midwestern setting.

Soon the police are involved – as more and more clues (carefully set up by Amy) convince them Nick has killed her – but, of course, they can’t produce a body.

Nick visits a high school beau of Amy’s to see if he might have a clue. Neither is particularly friendly, and in the end, the man’s mother throws him out. However, Amy calls the same man, and he later figures in the plot. The cops get more suspicious the more they investigate, and eventually, they take Nick in.

One night she observes him with his new, much younger girl (“seven days gone”) and thereafter puts her clues in each of the places he has taken his new girl. She has filled one place with insanely expensive things and left a letter telling him he is DONE.

The novel is filled with plot twists all based on the personalities of the key characters. The love story with which the book begins belies the complications of the later story.

Amy’s self-confidence that she can ruin her husband is made very believable. The story begins simply and builds as good novels do in a three-dimensional way – all the action brought on by the personalities in the book. And since the reader is in on it all, it becomes a three-dimensional experience.

Book info:
Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn
Crown Press, $25

Posted by Rae Eastman on May 23, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry