My Thoughts on Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

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I usually start my reviews with a quote from the book.  However, as I was browsing through my bookmarks, I realized that I couldn't quote any of what I had marked without giving away some detail, no matter how small, that might detract from the reading experience of this psychological thriller by the talented Gillian Flynn.  If you have read the book, or read a review of the book (which probably is everyone reading this), you already know the difficulty of dancing around the reveals in the book and still trying to give enough information to make a reader pick up the book.  And this is all just a testament to how tightly plotted, how immaculately conceived this book is.


I've read Flynn before, and she was good, but not this good.  Not only is this book a great thriller (and by this, I mean that I kept turning the pages, and I could sort of guess what was going to happen- the clues were there - but I wasn't 100% sure I was right), it is a great portrait of a crumbling marriage.


Here is what I can tell you about it:


1.  There are two narrators- Nick and Amy- two halves of a disintegrating marriage.  The book begins on the morning of their fifth anniversary when Amy disappears from their home.
2. The first half of the book is different from the second, and in the first half, the book is not only a whodunit, but a wonderful study in character.
3. Flynn does an excellent job distinguishing the voices of her point of view characters.  This is a major complaint of mine in many books from multiple points of view - the voices all sound the same.  Not in this case, which I think is a very difficult thing to do.


And that's about it.  I'm not normally a reader of thrillers, although I do usually like them when I do read them.  This is one worth reading in my opinion.

Title: Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn
 Publisher: Crown
Date: 2012
 Genre: Literary Thriller

432 pages.
Where I got it: From the publisher through Net Galley
Challenges: The Smooth Criminals Challenge