Photo courtesy of Google Images. My rating: 10/10 Good if you liked: anything, this book is for everyone (unless you're under 10 in which case you should wait a few years -- not because y'all 'shouldn't be exposed' to stuff or whatever, but because it's just not interesting if you try it too early on. Trust me, I've been there. See below) I first bought this book back in 2013 or 2014 (I was a seventh or eighth grader), when I saw its sleek, edgy-looking dark cover at Costco or Barnes & Nobles. I'd first browsed the free sample on iBooks (which actually has a more contemporary and chic cover, of Ben Affleck shrouded in the mist, and the translucent title overlaid on top) and found it intriguing the way an elementary schooler finds an AP Chemistry problem intriguing: I didn't, really, but I appreciated the elegance of the prose as well as the aesthetic of its cover. But the sheer genius eluded my shallow, YA-oriented middle school self, sailing right over my cliche-loving head. It seemed like a decent story, but something I'd have to convince myself to keep reading. I carried it around with me for a while, always a lump in the bottom of my backpack, trying to read it whenever I had a free moment after a test, but I found that I was convincing myself to read it rather than being genuinely invested in it. Fast forward three or four years, and it's spring of my sophomore year. I've just finished reading The Wife Between Us (which I also gave My Thoughts On, a few months ago! Right here) and I began trawling the Internet for book reviews and discussion forums for it, eager to continue the story in my head. By the first three or four reviews, I sensed a motif. People kept bringing up Gone Girl as its precedent, as the stunning First™ that Wife evolved from. So I thought, Man, I must've misread it in middle school. I picked it up off my bookshelf, sat down, and tried again. I was the opposite of disappointed. I couldn't stop reading. Before this, I'd been in a reading drought, which I'm not proud to admit; I stopped reading for the majority of March and April -- I told myself it was to focus on AP World History, which admittedly has a grain of truth in it, but the reality was I had free time; I was just using it on other things. But I started reading and I can still remember some of the phrases on the first page: "ventriloquist dummy," "her hard like a corn kernel," "riverbed fossil." The beginning is so haunting and story-like and sets up so well for when the story turns the Typical Narrative onto its head. [ WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW. ] Photo courtesy of Google Images.
I literally couldn't stop. I sat down on the sofa and wandered around the house in a dream-like haze, the book gripped in my hands, my eyes never leaving the page. It entranced me, the movement of the plot, and the characterization. Just when I thought it was starting to get predictable, it shifts, whip-fast, with the intense, cuttingly bone-like swerve of Flynn's prose. Incredible. The reveal of Nick's lover -- so well-done. And I still can't decide whose side I'm on, Nick's or Amy's, because Amy is a sadistic psychopath but she's also right. I LOVE this book, but I think I might've loved it even more if I'd picked it up offhand from a library and started reading, without knowing that it was a NYT bestseller and the mother of domestic thrillers, because that set my expectations incredibly high from the start. Gone Girl does an incredible job of delivering social commentary in the declarative without shoving it down the reader's throat. It's starkly straightforward, but I wouldn't have it another way. Amy's monologue after her diary self is swapped with her real voice was cold and chilling and true. Girls are still trying to play Cool Girl today. And with TV and the Internet and the movies, it's easier and easier than ever to mold yourself into someone you're not, everyone following the same script, for ease, for speed. Flynn pinpointed exactly what I've been grappling with for the past few months: we're all following the same script. My short story about that literal concept is going up in the Adroit Journal soon, and she encapsulated that in her book. It's also a thriller, too; it's not an intensely literary work that requires mental concentration and meticulous dissection to find the message. It doesn't give the reader time for that. It moves at a breakneck pace that teases sweat from your temples. You can feel the incongruity of people's actions and words ex. Nick's smile as he said he didn't kidnap Amy. A work that leaves you thinking for days after, but you enjoy it for the sweet, flowy read during –– hard to find. Meshing thriller and social commentary is hard, in my opinion. Usually, it's more subtext that you can choose to take away or you can choose to not ex. The Woman in the Window could be construed as commentary on the stigma surrounding alcoholism and drug addiction, but it's never so unflinchingly straightforward like Gone Girl was. Because authors typically try to be subtle about weaving in the irony and commentary, but Flynn delivers it straight-on. And usually that might be cliche, but because of the characters she's set up and the contrast with Diary Amy, the real Amy is just so real, and the tone Flynn takes with her is demanding, ruthless, witty, cold. Des and Go are interesting to me because a) they seem real, and their characters are so well built, and also b) both take archetypes and turn them on their heads. In a way, Go's playing Cool Twin Sister ex. drinking and swearing at the pub, being rough and masculine but also caring for Nick, and in a way, Des is playing Cool Boy ex. wanting to care for a damaged Amy but also enclose her and keep her pampered and soft and gentle, which leads to his demise at Amy's hands. I can't tell if I want Amy to go to jail or not. I can't tell whether I like her or not. Actually, I can. I don't like her as a person, but I like her as a character -- my opinion towards Severus Snape as well. I enjoyed the ending -- though, as always, I wish it wasn't the ending; if Flynn ever publishes a sequel I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even though I can feel that Nick and Amy Dunne's story has drawn to a close. Nick's decision to stay to protect the baby redeemed him a little bit in my eyes. I still haven't gotten the chance to watch the movie, and I read high praise for the performance of the woman playing Amy, and Ben Affleck is Ben Affleck. I'm excited to do so!
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