GONE GIRL (A FORMAT)

Well, this is supposed to be a review of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, but the reality is, I don't have the foggiest idea how to review this novel. It's not what it seems to be, but to be too precise about what it literally is would spoil the entertainment. The only thoughts I have after completing this book are: OH MY! WHATTA BOOK!! 😲 Ms Flynn, the author of "Sharp Objects" and "Dark Places", clearly surpassed herself with this book. Read on to know more about this amazing book and about why I think you should most definitely give it a try! Now, this article is divided into six categories. • Ratings and stuff about the book. • How I got my hands on this book. • Some background of the author. • The synopsis of the book. • About the writing style. •Some intriguing facts about the book. •Ratings and stuff about the book: Rating: Botopsy rating: 5/5✨ Goodreads: 4.1/5 Amazon: 4.2/5 Length of the book: 466 pages long. Genre: Fiction/Thriller-mystery. Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Series: Standalone. Format: Paperback. Source: Amazon. •How I came across this book: I heard a lot about Gillian Flynn and how she turns a simple story into a roller coaster ride. I wanted to try her best work and so I picked this one up, and I must admit that after reading this book, I'm completely dumbfounded! •About the author: Gillian Schieber Flynn ( born February 24, 1971) is an American writer. Flynn has published three novels, Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl,all three of which have been adapted for film or television. Flynn wrote the adaptations for the 2014 Gone Girl film and the HBO limited series Sharp Objects. She was formerly a television critic for Entertainment Weekly. •Synopsis: Gone Girl is sharp, mercurial, subtly layered and populated by characters so well imagined that they’re difficult to part with. Here, in this book, we have two main characters- Nick Dunne and Amy Elliott. Nick Dunne is a writer who lost his job in New York City when the magazine he worked for went under. He retreated to North Carthage, the small town in Missouri where he grew up, dragging his wife Amy, who is also a magazine writer. She is is also recently unemployed. Nick is a smart, good-looking guy, with a touch of the golden boy about him. When he moves to Missouri he buys a bar with his twin sister Margo. He gets a job teaching writing at the local junior college. He allows his professional prospects to quietly and gracefully deflate. Amy on the other hand, is a type-A personality, a Harvard grad with definite ideas about Nick's career and her own. "My wife had a brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity," Nick tells us. Amy doesn't fit in in North Carthage, and with no job and no social life to speak of, she's left alone at home to spin her wheels. They spin fast, very fast. On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick leaves the house after breakfast. He heads to work. While he is gone, Amy disappears into thin air. The journey that progresses to find the gone girl herself is maddeningly twisted, to say the least. It almost requires a game board to show how Nick and Amy move through this book. They met at a party in Brooklyn and were momentarily smitten. After they get married Nick lost his job. So they had to move back to Nick’s hometown, North Carthage, which Amy hated. In Missouri, they had the kinds of fights, infidelity, money troubles and other noir-style problems that witnesses will remember now that Amy’s gone. (Nick, go to jail.) Nick has a secret life that did not involve Amy. On the morning she vanished, he was off doing something that he is deeply ashamed of, and it is not revealed until late in the novel. Ms Flynn’s idea for Nick’s biggest secret will be, for some readers, the most startling detail in a book that is full of terrific little touches. 😉 Nick’s narrative begins the book, and it illustrates how many different ways there are to disassemble. Like many a less clever unreliable narrator, Nick likes lies of omission. The reader has to figure this out very gradually because Ms Flynn is impressively cagey about which details she chooses to withhold. The invisible Amy can talk only about her past behaviour. She began keeping the diary in 2005, and it describes the marriage as an emotional roller coaster. Even when the fights began, Amy went to elaborate efforts to be cheerful and boost her husband’s spirits, but she grew more and more worried as the marriage spiralled downward. And then the police show up. And Nick begins to lie. Not that Nick killed his wife. He's just a compulsive liar, one of those people whose deepest instinct isn't, to tell the truth; it's to tell people what he thinks they want to hear, except that he usually guesses wrong. But, when the police start unravelling his inventions, he starts to look like a bad guy. He looks worse when Amy's diary surfaces, detailing the deterioration of their marriage and Nick's increasingly volatile behaviour. So, Did Amy die?, who killed her, is it Nick?, What secret life did Nick had? To get the answers to the above-mentioned questions you have to read the book. Gone Girl begins as a whodunit, but by the end, it will have you wondering whether there's any such thing as a who at all. Gone Girl is a story about men and women who live double lives not because they're secret agents or jewel thieves but because as human beings they're incapable of being who they appear to be. Overall, the book is an incredible thriller. A must-read even for those who are not thriller fans. I bet you would become one. 😉 •Writing style: Gillian Flynn’s greatest strength as an author lies in her ability to change the way her readers perceive her protagonists. The writing is smart, witty and appalling. The portrayal of characters is sharp and intensive. There is so much to say about the lead female character Amy and how she pulls the readers towards her. Not to mention, the 'cool girl monologue' is on point, perfectly describes the kind of woman almost every man is looking for. The imaginative, fictional character that they desire to have for a lifetime. •Intriguing facts: 1. When Flynn was drafting Gone Girl, main character Amy's family's business was originally a dating service. The oh-so-perfect "Amazing Amy" idea only came later. 2. Flynn wrote the screenplay of the movie version of Gone Girl, which is produced by Reese Witherspoon. Which was further nominated for Golden Globe and Bafta. 3. Flynn has said that she was inspired to write the novel by the disappearance of Californian Laci Peterson in late 2002.

Amy is a woman on the wrong side of 30s and married to Nick Dunne. She is raised in a family of psychologist parents, who happen to be the creators of a character “Amazing Amy” in a book by the same name. Amazing Amy is always amazing as the name suggests. She has no chance to be less than perfect. The book series is very popular with the kids and people in general, but the Amy at home has a constant companion to compare herself to and proving to her to be a lesser mortal, always. The whole comparison reflects and colours Amy’s relations with friends at school and her social life as she grows up. Even so, Amy is vivacious, blond and has a figure to kill. She is older than Nick and has developed a complex of nearing 40 and a fear of losing her husband’s attention as she is getting old. Amy is rich too and has funds in the form of royalty, her parents keep in her name from the Amazing Amy series. Amy develops an unsatiating drive to be loved, admired and put on the pedestal by people who enter her life and that love and admiration has to be in increasing order at each occasion and encounter. If those in her life err in their duties to love and admire her, she doles out punishments to them.The punishments could be anything from accusations of stalking, to attempting to commit suicide for her love, to raping to even framing the other person for her own murder. Amy has grown up to be sociopath who can kill and die if she wishes to get her way with people. Nick is a writer for a magazine and has been laid off. He brings Amy to his hometown, Carthage and starts a bar by the name “The Bar”, in partnership with his twin sister, Margo( whom everyone calls Go) using money borrowed from Amy. They leave behind a life in New york against Amy’s wish. The twins are very close and “The Bar”, keeps them barely afloat in the face of a financial crises. In the backdrop are Nick’s mother who has terminal cancer and father who has Alzheimer's. Nick’s parents are divorced and his father has always been a woman hater which Nick despises and never wants to follow. Carthage is decrepit, ghost of a town after the economic meltdown. The guilt of failure and inexhaustible demands of his wife to demonstrate his love for her, makes him get entangled in an affair with Andie, his student. On their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy disappears from their house leaving behind clues for a treasure hunt. A treasure hunt is their private anniversary ritual, that leads to Nick’s anniversary present. Nick actually hates the treasure hunt and a constant need to prove his love and commitment to Amy. The clues for the treasure hunt are verses that are relevant to some private jokes between Nick and Amy during their good times and also relevant to places where Nick deceived Amy and made love to Andie. What follows after the disappearance of Amy is a high tension drama that touches the personal, psychological, social and the legal levels. It pictures the media with its sometimes imbecile and at times, ugly nuances. The media that has to do little with the actual case at hand and has its own agendas to prove that serve the anchors of the shows. It presents to us the wave as it travels with troughs and peaks of public sympathy, uproar and outrage, the lawyer who is there to outsmart but who is dismissed as plain inadequate by the catch of the net thrown by the very scheming and plotting Amy, the baffled police and a completely destroyed Nick awaiting his own arrest. Nick, who is a boy next door with his own weaknesses and shortcomings and has only an expectation of a normal life with a wife and a baby of his own.The people who have their fingers burnt in association with Amy are crying hoarse about their experiences but their voices get drowned in the popularity of the book. Nick has now two ways, either get arrested eventually because the noose that Amy has thrown becomes tighter and tighter every day or apologise in front of the public and pray publically for her return. He also has to think what he would do if his wife who had planted clues to frame him for her murder, returns. Gone girl is a brilliant account of how private events between two people can be manipulated to the person’s convenience and are so open to be interpreted by the two people. Nick and Amy both write their individual accounts of the events on Amy’s return after she disappears, as “Amazing” and “ Psycho Bitch”, respectively. It is book about how a sociopath takes advantage of people's emotions to suit their purpose. They are tigers on a prowl, ready to pounce at the slightest clue of the commitment of a mistake. Actually sociopaths are in one sided love with themselves. They love and hate themselves equally.They create darkness in the lives of people around them that imprisons them as Amy has imprisoned Nick in the darkness as long as they live. The book is long and yet nothing seems boring or lengthy or extra. It just steadily builds its tempo and keeps you in its grips.

This is fab book. The story is binge worthy, can be addictive at times. Please read that this is A format book which means it will be smaller than usual novels. Other than that book is legit, accurate printing.

Worth the money. All loved it. Suspense, Mystery interesting. Can read again and again.

perfect, enthralling read !! the item was shipped in quite a few days and fast, although there are a few dents and small folds on pages, Gillian's novel here is something to look forward too! Amazing read.

What happens when an over enthusiastic friend of yours sit down to narrate a story and that is what you get with Gone Girl and Gillian Flynn writing style. I have come across this for the first time and frankly it was one of those things that are weirdly good. The whole book is first person narration and trailing back to memories and just like i said before it is like hearing to a hyperactive friend narrating story with sound effects and facial expressions to amuse you and keep your attention straight. Seriously i never knew you could actually write sound effects but Gillian definitely managed to do so. The book starts kind of on a midway tone wherein you know something is happening but have no clue what is it. Somehow the first half of the book is a bit drag or monotonous which picks up in the second half with a twist and then things turn at every point from there. To me the book was a tale of two twisted brains caught up in something that made the read an intriguing at the same time a weird one. When you least expect there are twists that leave you spell bound and appreciate the intricacies of the whole plot. No doubt it is a thriller worth buying and shelving in your house. What I liked about the book is the fact that a whole bunch of ugly truth about we as humans and relationships have been vividly painted by the author that finally makes you wake up and look at yourself and that is what a book is supposed to do, to leave an impact. This one surely did it for me. The narration style of the book was somewhat a little different and weird to me There is a section where there is a very good insight into how women have their husbands wrapped around their fingers in the name of love and the character do come up with a name for it as well "dancing monkeys" which was actually hilarious and that particular chapter was one of the best and sweetest in the book Just as the case with some of the books i have read, here too the author keeps diverting too much from the main scenario and point and wandering faraway islands with her personal thoughts and character backgrounds. There are certain things in the story that the author points out that is painfully true and stabs at the right pressure points like the instance where through the character how she says that women has painfully gone down to change her character as per the man she meets to make him like her There are so many things that the author says in the book that makes me want to give her a standing ovation, applaud while saying Bellissimo...Bravo for bringing up the ugly truth. I would say that more than the plot of the book, it is certain things that was discussed and brought up in the book, that made me love it more. Grab with this book if you love a good thriller with weird twisted characters and a plot that tightens with progress.

Great book quality

Wow what a well crafted plot and superb narrative style. Gone Girl hooked me from the first page and I read it in one go. A perfect domestic thriller with the themes of a disintegrating marriage, greed, murder. Who should be believed and who should not, till what extent can a person go to get what they want...kept on haunting me long after I had finished reading it. Strongly recommended and five stars for me.

Très déçue . Arrivé en anglais. Pas très explicite sur le site.

Primé 20 meilleurs livres 2012 sur Amazon.com, je me suis laissé tenté et j'ai adoré. Le mystère se dévoile peu à peu comme un objet précieux emballé dans de fines couches de papier superposées. Dans la première moitié du roman on à le sentiment d'être monté dans un rollercoaster qui n'en finit pas de nous emporter de plus en plus haut avec une tension intensément palpable jusqu'au paroxisme... Puis...c'est la descente, en une spirale infernale, dans une puissante exploration des extrêmes que peuvent revêtir les rapports de couple. L'amour et la haine n'ont jamais été si proches, la force de notre part d'ombre si aiguisée. L'exploration de l'âme humaine est saisissante, décrite avec une intelligence subtile pour lui donner vie dans toute sa complexité. Un véritable tour de force qui mélange habilement polar et thriller psychologique. L'écriture est délicieusement soignée et minutieusement travaillée. Le récit est très habilement construit avec une narration subjective qui alterne à un rythme judicieusement choisi entre les deux protagonistes. On aurait peut-être aimé toutefois que ces deux récits alternés soient un peu plus différenciés dans le style d'écriture (cela reste très personnel ). Bref : De l'excellente littérature qui nous emporte dans des ambiances puissantes et saisissantes, avec des personnages d'une exceptionnelle profondeur psychologique et une histoire très prenante. BRAVO et MERCI Madame Flynn. MAJ 17.3 2014: Gone Girl est aussi un film américain de David Fincher prévu pour 2014

I loved this book from start to well almost the END, this book was so well written and you could read the character, which one do you like ? do you like the women understand her feel what she is feeling? or do you like the husband who seems so cold and distant at first, but book continues, lots of twists and turns, just when you think you have figured out what will happen next SURPRISE no something else happens and you want to keep reading to find out the next part. I couldn't put this book down, I just had to read, it was like a roller coaster I went from hating the husband to wanting him to win then I would change my mind. Only CRITIC I have is yes you got it the ENDING build up build up build up then ANTI CLIMAX but it may have been left open for a follow up book but was still worth the read

Arrived damaged and clearly used, package was whole and on time

Amo completamente la película que se adaptó de esta novela y desde hace años he querido leerla. Es increíble la calidad de esta historia! De mis mejores lecturas este año, además de que llegó perfecto el libro y súper rápido.