Book #8 – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This book was published in 2012, when I was half way through my last internship, 1 year engaged, and living in a postage stamp of an apartment. My life is so different than the two main characters, that you would think, I’d have nothing in common with them. Except, everyone who has been married has probably stared at their spouse and went “What are you thinking? Who are you?” I know I have, and I’m on my fifth anniversary this year.

I will admit, I knew one of the twists in this story. (The one that’s revealed immediately in part II) It was impossible not to, when the book was huge in 2014, into 2015 because of the movie. But I didn’t know everything. I didn’t know going in how much this book made me look at my husband and ask “What are you thinking?”.

This was my first selection for “The Great American Read”, and likely one of the few books where I really wanted to reach into the book, and slap every single character until they stopped talking. I understand I’m supposed to like Amy at the start, to feel for Nick as he scrambles to find what happened to Amy, but… they were so broken, they dulled my opinion of everyone around them.

Amy is exceedingly fake in her diary entries, and turns out, outside of her diary entries, too. She is a chameleon of personalities, and it becomes quickly apparent in her diary that she’s not real. (I still don’t know how the detectives didn’t catch on to that, but you know, plot loops). Or maybe I’m just jaded from too many “Mean Girls” type stories. Which means she is really the best fit for Nick, who is also really, really fake. Nick is so traumatized by his father’s personality issues, that he’s barely got a personality by the beginning of the book. He’s extremely wishy-washy (as my grandmother would say).

The plot though? If I hadn’t had the spoiler of Part II, I may have suspected the plot twist. I didn’t know about Part III, though, but knew something along those lines would happen. But if the plot was meant to make me not trust any of the main character’s motives? It worked like a charm. Because I wouldn’t want any of these people at one of my house parties.

Here’s the thing though… I saw parts of myself in both of them. Marriage is about compromise and work. You have 2 people with vastly different backgrounds and moral histories and the thought that love conquers all boundaries. Miscommunication, misinterpretation, it happens and sometimes you have to compromise on what gets planted in the front yard. (spoiler, it’s cherry trees in my yard). And Nick and Amy are like this perfect anecdotal showpiece of how wrong that can go. I uprooted my husband for work, put us in a tiny town on the Ohio river, and I know there are days he wishes I hadn’t. So, I get both Amy and Nick, I do, and if I’m a little nicer to my husband in the upcoming months? Cautionary tales always lead us on the right path sometimes, right?

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. – Gillian Flynn

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