Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

SPOILERS

Summary:

The novel starts out being narrated by Nick Dunne, a man who comes home to find his wife, Amy Dunne, missing. The narrative then goes to Amy's diary at different points during their relationship, detailing how the couple met, their struggles, and their move from New York City to a small town in Missouri.
In Nick's present narrative, the police and neighborhood begin a search for Amy, and Nick is led on by different clues left by Amy. In her diary, Amy emphasizes her fear of Nick, following the move to Missouri.
As the police start to suspect Nick, his failings as a husband (his affair, among other things) are revealed. His disdain for Amy is brought out as tension grows and diary Amy's fear of Nick grows in tune with his anger.
Part 2 of the book exposes Amy's true plot, the faking of her disappearance and murder, framing Nick as the culprit. The diary turns out to be fiction. Nick becomes more hateful and suspicious of his disappeared wife.
As Amy's plan falters, she goes to a creepy ex-boyfriend, Desi, for shelter. Once she regains faith in Nick, she kills Desi and comes back the surviving victim of an obsessed ex.
The couple reunites with Nick fully aware of Amy's manipulations, but everyone else none the wiser. Amy inseminates herself with Nick's sperm and the book ends with her pregnancy confirmed, and Nick commits to faking his love for her for the sake of their child.

Noteable quotes:

The red text were the notes I had written on the page, transcribed under the quote they were in reference to.

"it feels nice, after my recent series of nervous, respectful post-feminist men, to be a territory" (pg. 15).
"It's the female pissing contest - as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices men make for us" (pg. 62).
All of pages 80-81, including:

"It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again" (pg. 81).

"She reached out to touch my knee, and I felt a burst of rage that she didn't realize she need to go. Leave the casserole, you clingy groupie whore, and go. Daddy's-boy attitude, rising up. Just as bad" (pg. 147).

I know that Nick isn't the killer, or abductor or whatever, but he could be. He has so much hatred for women it is just disgusting. He absorbed his father hating women - his mom - all his childhood, and he's carried that hate with him. He only thinks it's better because he never, really, acts on that hate. he sucks it up. But that doesn't make him innocent. Far from it. His rage towards women is all the more dangerous because he's keeping it inside, all for it to one day burst out and destroy something. And Amy will be the closest target. She only killed herself before he did"

"In truth, I wanted her to read my mins so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation" (pg. 150).
"I'm so much happier now that I'm dead" (pg. 247).
All of pages 250-254, including:

"They're not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they're pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be" (pg. 251).

And this is the thing that breaks my heart. All of this, the patriarchy, the acting, the pain and struggle of it all - it's for a man. Not even a good man at that. A pathetic misogynistic asshole (most likely). When I convince myself I am someone I'm not, at least it's for my own benefit. I act a certain way because it's better than my true self. But these women's true selves are beautiful and interesting and deserve not only to be expressed and seen and heard, but loved, admired, and respected. The great tragedy of it all is how many women have been killed off for the sake of the beloved cool girl.

"I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy" (pg. 251).

I never really paid much attention to this part of the monologue but in recent years it is so relevant. The rise of the "Cool Guy" happened and the response from the non-cool men is one of such disgust and superiority compared to the female response to the "Cool Girl." I think it's because women understand that for some, a man who loves them is needed, so whatever is done to get to that point is worthwhile, though embarrassing at times. There are of course women who think of themselves as better than the Cool Girl, but really they are still playing the same game.

"But it's tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants" (pg. 252).
"He killed my soul, which should be a crime. Actually, it is a crime, According to me, at least" (pg. 268).

"a plain brunette disguised as a pretty brunette" (pg. 364).

I really love the way Flynn writes her characters - disgustingly. Amy and Nick, her descriptions of said characters are so understandable yet clever. This one, for example, is so slight but it is writing like this that makes the whole story a critique of society. Suburban society specifically. Not that the cities are exempt, they're not, but they aren't the setting. It paints such a fine image of the misery that exists in real life. Once all of the layers are peeled back, or even just when you take a closer look. For example the descriptions of women in the suburbs, the hideous women.

"It'd be so easy, for him to write me off that way. He'd love to do that, to be able to dismiss me so simply. 'Everything I do, I do for a reason. Nick,' I say. 'Everything I do takes planning and precision and discipline'" (pg. 441).

Nick should be on his fucking knees apologizing, worshipping her. When women are cunning, intelligent, and brilliant, they are feared. And when they're feared the easiest way to subdue the threat is to call them crazy. 'Psycho Bitch.' If I had a woman like that in my life I would admire the fuck out of her. And she's right, he was nothing before her. She's that good that she made him both a better man, and an evil one. Even still, some are just pathetic to the core.

Review and notes:

4.5 stars - Stunning, Amy deserved better. I have an essay titled, Analysis of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which I hope you read, but this review will be more of a literary look at the book, rather than specific plot points.

Character, Amy Dunne, Gone Girl (2015)

My favorite aspect of this book, and there are many I adore, is Amy's genius. I have read few books with female main characters that possess such a tactical brilliance as Amy, and it is incredibly refreshing. It may seem silly but one of my favorite things to do is admire geniuses. I love reading about them, any kind of brilliant mind is so interesting in itself, and Flynn's writing only attracts me even more to Amy's mind. One of my criticisms of the book is how many pages were wasted on Nick's point of view. Nick speaks too of Amy and occasionally of her brilliance, but it is incomparable to Amy's own narrative. The book, My Lovely Wife falls into the same predicament, though in its case, the entire story is narrated by the husband, and there is no point at which the brilliant wife is put in charge of her narrative. Fortunately, Flynn had the wisdom to let Amy shine through her own chapters with first-person narration. Part of Amy's brilliance is her ability to manipulate those around her, most obviously into seeing her as someone else: The Cool Girl, to name one persona.

For the first half of the book, the reader is led to believe Amy is an innocent woman caught up in a romance that turned into an abusive relationship, a relationship that led sweet Amy to her murder. Amy is creative, a creator above all. She creates personas for her to adopt, personas that get her everything she wants. The childhood success, the boyfriend, and the public's approval. Amy is incredibly intelligent and perceptive, she sees under everything, beneath her parent's vain dreams, her environment, and each individual in her life. Some of Flynn's best prose comes out when Amy is describing the people around her, simply observing. She observes, and out of those observations is able to craft exactly the persona she needs, and not only that, is able to wear that persona like a glove. She slips seamlessly in and out of different personas, in doing so dazzling and frightening the reader. To me, Amy by herself was the most thrilling part of the novel.

Part of what expands this novel past simply the thriller genre is its salient analysis of American suburbia/city life and the characters that inhabit it. One way I think Flynn does this really well is in her description of women's need to compete with each other for status and men's attention. The quote by John Berger goes, "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at," I think really rings true in Flynn's world, which is, of course, our world. It is often the case that the competition women go through for status and such is written and looked at as petty, frivolous, vain, and so on. Flynn's portrayal of the same subjects, however, is with a sense of decency, and respect, if not reverence, for the women that put themselves through this competition, a competition where no one wins, for power. This competition for power in today's world, as Flynn puts it, is "the female pissing contest...being able to detail the sacrifices men make for us" (pg. 62). To look back on history and see all the ways women have contorted themselves, murdered themselves for the sake of power, two things can be true: yes, it is a tragedy that women have had to go through these processes just for the sake of dignity and status, and yes, it is also true that each and every woman's strive for power is respectable and admirable. The shape-shifting, - corsets, cosmetics, surgery - as well as the personality-shifting - the cool girl, the good girl, any of the countless personas women have come with over the centuries to acquire men's attention - have all been attempts at power. Amy Dunne salutes and of course spits on, every woman playing the same game beside her, and we as the audience do too.

Gone Girl is so much more than a thriller, it's a feminist narrative, a social commentary, a complex piece of literary fiction.

Affiliates:

Gone Girl (2015) is surprisingly accurate to the book. I watched this movie both before and after reading the book (I know I'm a terrible reader for having watched the movie first, shame on me), and caught only a few discrepancies between the two. The casting of Amy and Nick, Rosamund Pike, and Ben Affleck, really works. Pike's performance is just as cunning as the book Amy, her delivery of every line is cold and chilling, I lust love the sound of her voice, and Ben Affleck just naturally has some sort of inferior, quite rageful, effect about him that really works for Nick's character. There are a lot of good stills from this movie, it was hard to pick one for the image (I wanted to go with Bloody Amy but that it may be too distracting), and the gray and sullen air the movie holds really matches the bleak suburban setting. I thought Emily Ratijikowski and Neil Patrick Harris were not very smart choices, Emily is too pretty, and Neil is too...obvious. Overall the movie is 4 stars.

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