Book Review: Gone Girl

I started reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn a few weeks ago. I then saw the film was coming out at the end of the year, and forced myself to finish the book off.
This is a story of love, hatred and pure evil. The book is set mostly in Missouri, and it starts on the day that should have been Nick and Amy's five year wedding anniversary. But then Nick finds Amy missing. And the police start investigating him. Their investigations reveal lies, inappropriate behaviour and a diary that Amy left behind. Nick is adamant he didn't kill his wife, but did he?

NB: Whilst all care has been taken to avoid spoilers, this review may inadvertently contain some.

The book starts as a "whodunnit", and I loved the first third of the book. I was hooked on the story, on the characters, on the writing. Then the (IMO screamingly obvious) OMG BIG TWIST occurs and the story just collapses. The events become more and more ridiculous, as the characters become even more unlikable. Seriously, the characters have absolutely no redeeming qualities, and this makes the book very difficult to read. It's not even just the fact that the characters are bad people - I'm not a stranger to books with unlikable characters, or books that deal with darker subjects (Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho is one of my favourite reads - horrible people can still be interesting when portrayed well) But, as well as being horrible people, the characters are shallow, one-dimensional and there is no character development whatsoever. Not to mention that everyone in the book apparently has the same occupation (They're all writers! Nick's a writer, Amy is a writer, Amy's parents were writers!)
Everyone that is, except for Go, Nick's twin sister. Go, short for Margo. What a ridiculous name.

This book was mostly well-written, and flicks between three points of view - Nick, Pretend Amy and Real Amy. This had the potential to be great, but left me feeling unsatisfied. Both characters are clearly unreliable, and in the beginning (when the book is still a mystery) this works really well. You can't really trust either character, and you're left questioning everything that they both say, which makes for some great mystery. However, Amy's diary entries were so contrived they left me feeling frustrated. People don't write like that in real life, recalling entire conversations and situations as if they were writing a book about it. Flynn is great at prose; her words flow and they're easy enough to read. The only criticism I have in relation to the actual writing is that the plot devices (such as the Punch & Judy dolls) were glaringly obvious.

So let's talk about the giant plot twist: I am not even good at picking up on twists, but even I guessed this one the second I read about the credit cards. I gave J's mum a quick run-down of the plot, and she guessed the twist. Basically, I feel that anyone who has read a thriller novel will see this one from miles away.
The fact that it was so obvious is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, since it's revealed about a third of the way into the book. It's the descent into ridiculousness after the big twist reveal that is really bad. The story becomes unbelievable, it starts to not make sense, and rather than being integral to the story, almost all of the characters only seem to exist to push the plot forward.

And then there's the ending. Oh my God. I have not read a worse ending to a book in my life. It is so unbelievably lazy that it seriously feels like Flynn just gave up writing the book. (Which made sense when I read through the acknowledgements) The ending is worse than "I then woke up and it had all just been a dream", because it finishes the story with absolutely no resolution.

In a nutshell, I didn't hate the book so much that it stopped me from finishing it, but I probably won't be reading it again. This is one of those books that divides a lot of people; have you read it? What did you think?




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