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Gone Girl: A Novel
by Gillian Flynn (Goodreads Author), Julia Whelan , Kirby Heyborne
by Gillian Flynn (Goodreads Author), Julia Whelan , Kirby Heyborne
«“Guess what Jeff found in his cabin for me," Grete says, "another book by the Martian Chronicle guy." "Ray Bradburrow", Jeff says. Bradbury, I think. "Yeah, right, Something Wicked This Way Comes," Grete says, "It's good". She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book. It's good or it's bad, I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad - like a hot dog.» - Amy Elliot Dunn, Eight Days Gone - Gone Girl
I feel for Grete. It is hard to find something new to say about a book everyone has read. I read many other reviews and admire the deep analysis of the characters and what that might or might not say about humanity. I especially enjoyed the discussion from Three Guys One Book “Flynn does some fairly spectacular things with these two characters, and slowly extracts the air from their lives. She does it with characters, not story, she throws two scorpions in a box and shuts the lid.”.
Not sure I have much more to add to this discussion than dear dim witted Grete. It’s good, I say with my best Southern drawl. I thoroughly enjoyed Gone Girl. I liked the shifting narration from the perspective of husband Nick and wife Amy. I liked the unexpectedness of the protagonist and antagonist changing roles midstory.
I would not want to meet either of the main characters in a dark alley, but I did love being deceived into thinking that the Amy was a loving wife and that the egotistical Nick was a bad seed. The plot twists have you rooting for an outcome you might normally find shocking, and you might be surprised by your own desire for revenge. The supporting roles of Boney and Go, as well as Amy's self-involved parents, make for a terrific contrast of dull against Nick and Amy’s sharp wittedness.
It’s good.
I feel for Grete. It is hard to find something new to say about a book everyone has read. I read many other reviews and admire the deep analysis of the characters and what that might or might not say about humanity. I especially enjoyed the discussion from Three Guys One Book “Flynn does some fairly spectacular things with these two characters, and slowly extracts the air from their lives. She does it with characters, not story, she throws two scorpions in a box and shuts the lid.”.
Not sure I have much more to add to this discussion than dear dim witted Grete. It’s good, I say with my best Southern drawl. I thoroughly enjoyed Gone Girl. I liked the shifting narration from the perspective of husband Nick and wife Amy. I liked the unexpectedness of the protagonist and antagonist changing roles midstory.
I would not want to meet either of the main characters in a dark alley, but I did love being deceived into thinking that the Amy was a loving wife and that the egotistical Nick was a bad seed. The plot twists have you rooting for an outcome you might normally find shocking, and you might be surprised by your own desire for revenge. The supporting roles of Boney and Go, as well as Amy's self-involved parents, make for a terrific contrast of dull against Nick and Amy’s sharp wittedness.
It’s good.
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Quotes Kimberly Liked
“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“The ones who are not soul-mated – the ones who have settled – are even more dismissive of my singleness: It’s not that hard to find someone to marry, they say. No relationship is perfect, they say – they, who make do with dutiful sex and gassy bedtime rituals, who settle for TV as conversation, who believe that husbandly capitulation – yes, honey, okay, honey – is the same as concord. He’s doing what you tell him to do because he doesn’t care enough to argue, I think. Your petty demands simply make him feel superior, or resentful, and someday he will fuck his pretty, young coworker who asks nothing of him, and you will actually be shocked.
Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don’t land me in one of those relationships where we’re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and ‘playfully’ scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only… and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes.
So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I’m the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart – perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I’m in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.
And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you’re buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though). You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It’s finally arrived.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don’t land me in one of those relationships where we’re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and ‘playfully’ scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only… and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes.
So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I’m the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart – perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I’m in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.
And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you’re buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though). You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It’s finally arrived.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“The midwest is full of these types of people. The nice enoughs but with a soul made of plastic. Easy to mold, easy to wipe down. The woman's entire music collection is formed from Pottery Barn compilations. Her books shelves are stocked with coffee table crap The Irish in America, Mizzou Football - A History in Pictures, We Remember 911, something dumb with kittens. I knew I needed a pliant friend for my plan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick. Someone who would become overly attached to me. Someone who would be easy to manipulate. Who wouldn't think to hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“Guess what Jeff found in his cabin for me," Grete says, "another book by the Martian Chronicle guy." "Ray Bradburrow", Jeff says. Bradbury, I think. "Yeah, right, Something Wicked This Way Comes," Grete says, "It's good".
She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book. It's good or it's bad, I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad - like a hot dog.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book. It's good or it's bad, I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad - like a hot dog.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Reading Progress
| 09/25/2012 |
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30.0% |
