Gillian Flynn
Gillian Flynn’s third novel, the chilling and compellingly
readable Gone Girl, is told from two perspectives, husband and wife Nick Dunne
and Amy Elliot Dunne. We are first introduced to Nick Dunne, a man whose wife
has just gone missing on a hot July day, a day which also happens to be their
fifth wedding anniversary. Nick returns from the bar he owns to find the house
in disarray and no Amy. Eerily enough, there is the first clue to her annual
anniversary treasure hunt. He calls the police and begins the bizarre chain of
events that will change his life and the lives of those around him.
In the next chapter we meet Amy, the happy, full-of-love
Amy, the Amy from five years ago. We see Amy and Nick meet and fall in love,
kissing for the first time in a cloud of powdered sugar outside of a bakery. As
the viewpoint flips back and forth between Nick and Amy and between timelines, a
marriage is born and a marriage begins to disintegrate.
Flynn throws in twists and manipulations, zigs and zags.
Masks are torn off and true colors emerge. Loyalties falter, and the reader will find their sympathies turning. Did Nick
do it? The police seem to think so. If not Nick, who wanted Amy dead? The clues
to her treasure hunt are wrapped in mystery. Nick tries to unravel the clues as
his own life quickly unravels, with the people around him beginning to suspect
him of the unthinkable.
Flynn’s descriptive prose paints flawed, believable
characters in unbelievable situations, and her tight pacing will keep one
flipping the pages to the final brutal conclusion. Gone Girl is an intense psychological thriller
that is hard to put down.