Gone Girl: What Happened To Amazing Amy?

When I read Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I learned one very valuable lesson about mystery novels. Never trust a first-person narrator. Let that lesson be your guide as you start reading Gillian Flynn's thrilling Gone Girl.

The novel opens with the disappearance of Amy Elliot Dunne from her Missouri home on the fifth anniversary of her marriage to Nick, a man she met and married in her hometown of New York City. Amy's parents are psychologists who made a lot of money in years past by writing a series of children's books about "Amazing Amy," a character modeled after their perfect daughter. Unfortunately, her parents were recently beset by financial troubles and took most of her trust fund money. When she and Nick were both laid off, they moved back to his boyhood home of Missouri to take care of his ailing mother. Nick and his sister Margo set up a bar with the last of Amy's trust fund money and she settled into being a bored housewife. Until the day she disappears.

The novel alternates between Nick's narrative starting from the day of Amy's disappearance and excerpts from Amy's diary beginning from the day she met Nick. Amy's diary paints a picture of two people who fall rapidly in love but have been facing increasing strain in their marriage. Amy is patient and enduring, trying not to become a harridan, but Nick's growing aloofness and quickness to anger become worrisome. Nick's narrative makes it clear that he was unhappy with his marriage and he keeps hiding things from the reader, choosing not to divulge vital details that could explain what exactly he was doing when Amy disappeared. As the days pass, media scrutiny grows, the press are camped out on his lawn, and the police are asking uncomfortable questions. And eventually, people become convinced that Nick has murdered his wife.

It is hard to sympathize with Nick, a man who obviously has secrets, and as the police pursue their investigation, there's a mounting pile of evidence to suggest that Amy never left the house alive. Amy's parents want to trust their son-in-law but they too lose faith in him until it looks like his sister might be the only person who believes he is innocent. Whether or not that belief is justified is something you'll have to find out for yourself.

Gone Girl is a brilliant piece of writing that delves deep into the twisted psyches of its characters and presents what can only be described as one of the best twists I have ever encountered in a mystery novel. Halfway through this book you will gasp, perhaps utter an expletive, then furiously flip pages till you get to the end. You will feel exploited, misdirected, confused, and exhilarated all at once. Trust me.