Review: Gone Girl

October 10, 2017

Gone Girl Review

Gone GirlGone Girl by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.”

 I really don't know if there's anything I can say about this book that hasn't been said before, but for the sake of organizing my ideas I'll try. However, considering I can't really talk about this book without getting to spoiler territory, I can only warn you not to keep reading if you haven't read the book, or watched the movie (which is really good by the way). So let's get into it.

 Gone Girl is a sharp, sarcastic and ultimately vicious story about a marriage that has gone horribly wrong. I'm asumming you know the story, Nick Dunne lives a seemingly perfect life, until his brilliant and beautiful wife disappears in suspicious circumstances that lead to believe that he killed her. Only to be revealed later that it was actually her who ran away and framed him for her murder. Amy Dunne is a psychopath, she's smart and cold and has been hating her husband for a while now. Pretty much because he decided he doesn't love her anymore, yet still dragged her across the country to live in a house she hates and consumed what was left of her money, and on top of that he's cheating on her with a student of his. So she's also vengeful.

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. [...] Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

 There's a odd kind of joy in watching these two destroy each other, I must admit I even sort of started rooting for Amy after the Cool Girl monologue, she's so full of self righteousness and hate, it's kind of enjoyable to listen to her calculations. On the other side Nick strucks me as an asshole really, though a likeable one with that strange sense of humor of his. Of the two he seems to be the "normal one" but I think he's the most hateful of the pair. He despises Amy, he's tired of her but won't ask for a divorce because his bar was bought with her money and he fears she would take it from him, besides he doesn't like confrontation and a divorce just seems like too much work.

 I'm not going to pretend otherwise, it's a bit of a f**ked-up book, but a very good one at that. It's fast-paced and loaded with witty, sarcastic writing. Nick and Amy are like metaphors that ask themselves if they really know the person they married, and there's a great deal of critizism for those pretend to be someone else in order to be loved. I absolutely recommend it, but beware, it's not an easy read.

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4 Comments

  1. I loved that movie! Rossamund Pike is one of the best actresses out there, I'm glad you liked the book, it must be even sharper than the movie? Great review.

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    1. Yes! She's the best, I really can't imagine another actress playing Amy. It is sharper and it provides more information on the main characters than the movie, like Nick's mental state and such.

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  2. A likeable asshole, haha, I didn't like Nick either, but that's probably because I didn't like Ben in the movie, still, in the book he struck me as really violent. I think people overlook that because Amy was the real psychopath, but he wasn't a white dove either.

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    1. Well I don't really like Ben Affleck, but I though he was perfect for the role. Though I do understand what you mean, I'm not sure about violent, but I thought he was full of hate and resentment, maybe even more than Amy, he just was too lazy to do anything about it.

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