May Book Review

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@Barrie Summy

This month I will be reviewing GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn.  There was such a buzz when this book was made into a movie that came out last fall that I decided to check it out.  I went online to my local library and put a hold on the audio version of the book.

I was far enough down the list that it took six months to become available to me to download and listen to it.  By that time I wasn't as "into" it as I had been so I actually considered not downloading it.  Before I let it go though I looked to see how many people were on the hold list . . . 268!  I don't remember where I started but I really believe it was a much smaller number than that so I decided I could download it and decide later if I would actually listen to it.

Then I decided after all that that I really should listen to it, so I did.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Nick Dunne is a man whose wife has gone missing.  At first people (i.e. the police) don't want to listen to him because nothing major seems amiss.  Yes, the living room looks like there may have been a struggle in there but it also appears staged.  And the iron was left on but they think it was just absent-mindedness, not foul play.

The story is told in three parts.  The first part is told from Nick's point of view in the present, as well as Amy Elliott Dunne's (his wife) point of view as seen from old journal entries.  The reader gets benefit from these journal entries but it's not something (the journal or the entries) that comes to light for anyone else until much, much later in the book.

In the first part you get to see the inner workings of the relationship between Nick and Amy and it's not a pretty picture.  As the story starts unfolding everything points to Nick having caused harm to his wife, despite his denials of any wrong doing and best efforts to uncover the truth of what happened.

What I liked about the book is that it was well written and an interesting story came out of it.  Amy and Nick weren't particularly likeable people but I was still drawn in and interested in what happened next.

What I didn't like about the book . . . I checked out the table of contents on the audio book and it provided some spoilers that I would've rather been totally shocked by when they came to light.  It also was read at a very slow pace.  Fortunately you can speed up the cadence so I listened to a lot of the book at double time, which sounded normal.  If that hadn't been an option I probably wouldn't have finished the book.

But the bottom line is that I really liked this book and now want to check out the movie that was based on it.

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