Gone Girl

By Daria Radler

“What are you think­ing? How are you feel­ing? Who are you? What have we done to each oth­er? What will we do?”

Boy los­es girl — what starts with a clas­sic open­ing scene of a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller turns out to be much more than that. When his wife dis­ap­pears on the morn­ing of their fifth wed­ding anniver­sary, Nick Dunne’s small town life in Mis­souri is about to turn upside down. Not only do the police find a crime scene in the Dunne’s liv­ing room, they also have to deal with a hus­band who is nei­ther sur­prised nor griev­ing. While the public’s inter­est in Amy grows by the day, Nick soon los­es everyone’s sym­pa­thy. He smiles at all the wrong times; he lies and is far from being a good husband.

It seems like a clas­sic case of con­vict­ing the hus­band: While he des­per­ate­ly tries to explain him­self and fight the tight­en­ing noose around his neck, Amy’s diary only con­firms the grow­ing sus­pi­cion that Nick is a mean and misog­y­nist bul­ly: “I catch him look­ing at me with those watch­ful eyes, the eyes of an insect, pure cal­cu­la­tion, and I think: This man might kill me.”

Could he have done it? Could he have killed Amy?

Vig­or­ous­ly, Nick tries to hunt for clues that might not only dis­close Amy’s final steps before her dis­ap­pear­ance but also help him to under­stand the rea­sons for her appar­ent­ly twist­ed mind. Yet, what ulti­mate­ly awaits him at the end is far from a roman­tic clo­sure: Boy meets girl.

Gone Girl, the third nov­el writ­ten by Gillian Fly­nn, was pub­lished in 2012 and deserv­ing­ly hit The New York Times’ best­seller list short­ly there­after, lead­ing its Hard­cov­er Fic­tion Best­seller list for eight weeks. Nar­rat­ed by Amy and Nick Dunne, it does­n’t take long before we get sucked into a thrilling net of lies and intrigues. While remain­ing per­fect­ly clue­less as to where the sto­ry is tak­ing us, we become the match-ball in an excit­ing pow­er game of deceit and mad­ness, sym­pa­thiz­ing with Nick and Amy in equal mea­sure but at dif­fer­ent times.

Sus­pense­ful till the very last page, Gone Girl explores the lim­its of unre­li­able nar­ra­tion and the dark­est cor­ners of the human psy­che, and ulti­mate­ly leaves us wide-eyed, gasp­ing, hands on our hips, and wish­ing for more. If you haven’t yet had a chance to read this nov­el, get your­self down to the near­est book­store right away. You won’t be sorry.

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