Gone Girl

"I know, I know, I’m being a girl."

People like this book. A lot seem to really enjoy it. I know David Fincher is on his way to direct a filmed version of the book.

I can't like it. The book, at its core, is a version of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short story called "[b:Sherlock Holmes: The Problem of Thor Bridge|19768504|Sherlock Holmes The Problem of Thor Bridge|Arthur Conan Doyle|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1387755528s/19768504.jpg|27809969]". Having said that, I'm surprised with how inundated I was with the author's attempts to make Amy a hip character, but really ended up with a faded, dated person; sure, I think some things were sweetly - and horridly also, in a good sense of the word - described in the book, to a good extent, but when most of the words in this story are filler for a good plot, I wish it could have been better than this.

There are so many author's tricks applied throughout the book, reading it felt like a 100 yard hurdle race.

Also, I'm a bit concerned with many of the antifeministic things in the book, dialogue or not:

It’s a very female thing, isn’t it, to take one boys’ night and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage?

I know, I know, I know that losing a job is incredibly stressful, and particularly for a man [...]

‘I hope you have friends, relatives, who are looking out for you during this, Nick,’ she said, swatting a horsefly. ‘Men forget to take care of themselves. Comfort food is what you need.’

I thought the unkind thought, one of those that burbled up beyond my control. I thought: Women are fucking crazy. No qualifier: Not some women, not many women. Women are crazy.

I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt: that no matter how much you and I blunder, you always love me and want me to be happy. And that should be enough for any girl, right?

You don’t ever want to be the wife who keeps her husband from playing poker – you don’t want to be the shrew with the hair curlers and the rolling pin.

Gilpin rolled his eyes toward me; I almost expected him to make a joke – sounds like someone’s on the rag – the guy was laying it on so thick.

Les lieux sombres avaient déjà été un coup de cœur, en voici un autre. On peut difficilement nier que Gillian Flynn maîtrise l’art de la narration à la perfection. Tant d’habileté et de virtuosité me bouleversent. Si, si ! Nous n’avons pas là une banale réflexion sur l’évolution d’un couple très amoureux, sur le pourquoi du comment l’amour le plus entier peut dégénérer en haine et mépris. Le roman de Flynn est bien plus subtil que cela.

Le récit alterne avec la narration de Nick, qui démarre le jour de la disparition de sa femme Amy, et des extraits du journal intime de celle-ci, qui débute le jour de leur rencontre, quelques années plus tôt. La première partie nous donne donc deux versions très différentes du couple Nick-Amy, et l’on frissonne de voir combien leurs points de vue sont différents, à quel point le manque de communication les a plongés dans la rancœur et l’incompréhension la plus totale. Mais tout cela n’est qu’apparences. Le fil des événements est très retors, les personnages plus vrais que nature, et souvent très inquiétants. Même si l’on sent un peu venir le principal coup de théâtre, la suite promet bien des surprises, et termine en apothéose avec un dénouement qui pourra faire grincer des dents plus d’un lecteur. Ou pas.

Absolute brilliant! I couldn't put it down.

An excerpt from the book that I particularly liked.

What means being a Cool Girl?

"Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. 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. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men -- friends, coworkers, strangers -- giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.”

I think this is nearly a four, as there is a lot of good stuff in Gone Girl.

It's original and self-propelled, hard to put down, with just the right amount of twists. Some of those twists are telegraphed a good bit, I think intentionally, and some are concealed until the last second. Most of the characters are pretty horrible, but they need to be for the story to work.

It misses the mark in a small way with the prose and dialogue, which are a bit flat. I wouldn't think of it as a big deal, but with this being talked up in some more literary circles I hoped for more. I don't know why Gone Girl is treated more seriously than, say, Ludlum.

It misses the mark in a bigger way in that characters seem to be cornered into their reactions in ways that I couldn't believe. I can imagine so many outs for each of these (protagonists?) people that I can't buy into their eventual destination. And the plot would unravel pretty quickly should a rational decision crop up once or twice.

I kind of enjoyed the heck out of it and I've been recommending it to people since about the halfway point.