An Effective Thriller About Two Unlikeable People

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown, 2012, 432pp.)

Young marrieds Nick and Amy Dunne are in trouble. Like so many people today, they find themselves bogged down in the mire of today's rotten economy, their jobs (magazine journalist and Cosmo quiz-writer respectively) made obsolete by the Internet. Due to money troubles and general incompatibility, their five-year-old marriage has crumbled, leaving them locked in a hateful, claustrophobic relationship. Then, on the day of their anniversary, Nick returns home to find Amy missing. When police find trace amounts of blood in the kitchen, they begin to suspect that Nick is the culprit. Is Nick being framed, or is he truly responsible for a horrible crime? By examining both past and present, Gone Girl traces the ugly meltdown of a marriage, and the terrible consequences it brings.

Although I won’t hesitate to proclaim Gone Girl to be a tense psychological thriller and an excellent choice for airport reading or beach trips, I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about the novel as a whole. Like the 1989 Michael Douglas movie, War of the Roses (which details the worst divorce battle in history), Gone Girl focuses on the absolute worst aspects of two fairly unlikeable people. While I must applaud Flynn for going against the grain in this aspect, I can’t think of two characters I would rather NOT read about ever again. The reader will either delight in Nick and Amy's despicable natures or want them both to die horrible deaths. It’s one of those books that makes you glad that you read it (just to see what the fuss was about), but also equally glad when you finish it and move on to something prettier.

Hardly Lovely

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown and Company, 2002, 328pp.)

14-year-old Susie Salmon, a sweet, naïve girl from a loving family, is raped and murdered by a serial child-killer. Granted new omniscient vision, she narrates the rest of the story from heaven, offering details of her short life and death to the reader while watching the activities of her family, friends, and the man who took her life. Sebold’s novel is dissatisfying for a number of reasons. Her version of heaven is stereotypical, being a kind of mundane consolation prize for murder victims. A wonderland of one’s own design, Susie’s heaven is where she plays soccer, reads fashion magazines, and can have everything except what she truly wants, her life. This in itself is depressing. Her family never finds her body, nor is her killer brought to proper justice (though he does meet some form of punishment). When Susie is given a chance to temporarily return to Earth by possessing one of her former classmates, she choses not to immediately run home to her folks, but go have sex with her high school crush. Lastly, the killer’s punishment, when it finally comes, is so mundane and random as to be positively infuriating, and turns out to be as random as Susie’s decision. Sorry to say that the interesting and original premise is the only thing this reviewer has come to admire in a book that some people might find unsettling and disturbing (or “triumphant” and “stunning,” according to Time and The New Yorker). If you have the gumption and fortitude to read past the first chapter (which describes Susie’s untimely demise) without throwing the book at the wall, then this book may be for you. It certainly isn’t for everyone.

Click on the cover for image source.