You Go, Girl

I was thumbing through an issue of Entertainment Weekly a few months ago and came upon a positively glowing review of a new novel entitled Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. Flynn was a former writer for the magazine herself, so I had the skeptical thought that a former co-worker might just be throwing her a bone. Still, the magazine had given the book its top marks, and the quick summary of the novel sounded interesting. And yet I mostly forgot about it soon after.

Weeks later, Gone Girl had jumped to the top of the bestseller list. Readers were weighing in too, from GoodReads to Amazon to Barnes & Noble, and were giving mostly enthusiastic reviews. Okay, I decided... let's give it a shot.

It's a challenge to provide a synopsis of Gone Girl, because a lot of the fun of it comes from the unusual narrative path it marches. I myself wish I'd known less about it ahead of time. So I'll simply give you the opening premise: a woman vanishes on the fifth anniversary of her marriage to her husband. He comes home from work to find a confused scene of violence in his house, an implication of a possible abduction... and yet not a wholly convincing one. As an investigation and search begins, police and the public begin to suspect the man may have murdered his wife. And though that really only covers the first 20% of the novel, I can really go no further.

Gillian Flynn has a very gifted way with words. Her writing is rich with metaphor, perfect phrases that seem natural on the page, but one can easily imagine resulted only from hours over the keyboard. She uses a compelling structure for this narrative -- each chapter alternates between two different first-person perspectives, one the husband in the aftermath of the disappearance, the other the wife in the form of diary entries chronicling the long arc of the couple's relationship from the day they met. The "he said, she said" approach yields fun contradictory viewpoints for the reader to enjoy, and also builds interest for the point in the book where you know the timelines will finally intersect.

There's a procession of fun plot developments, though I will express a slight reservation about the novel overall -- the ultimate ending of the book feels like it strains credibility a bit. On the one hand, it does feel like the appropriate climax for the characters in tone; on the other hand, it just doesn't seem like the story should really end there, after everything you've read.

But as I said, that's a slight reservation. The journey is certainly worth taking in spite of that. I give Gone Girl an A-. If you like unusual fiction and polished writing, you're sure to love this.