Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
He promised to take care of me and yet I feel afraid. I don't feel like Nick's wife. I am something to be loaded and unloaded, like a sofa or a cuckoo clock...tossed into a junkyard, thrown into the river. I don't feel real anymore. I feel I could disappear.
Every picture tells a story. Whether pictorially depicted or intimately written such as a diary kept by our female protagonist, there are always (at least) two sides to every story and truths to unravel from the dishonesty and deceit.
In a dysfunctional marriage, with mismatched relationships the faults lie with both parties. Nick and Amy's marriage might initially seem blissful with Amy swooning over Nick's socks fat with love on their first wedding anniversary before it turns pear-shaped and oppressive shortly afterwards.
Amy was from an affluent background, the "product" of her parents' wealth based on the Amazing Amy series. Her childhood in fact, every part of her growing up had been documented and exposed to American society and she had a reputation to live up to. She had to be amazing, mediocrity was just not good enough for this socialite of a New Yorker. She had to be: brilliant, creative, kind, thoughtful, witty and happy. When Amy met Nick she was playing the girl with style, the Cool Girl. She was pretending to be the kind of woman desired by men such as Nick.
When Amy disappeared from Nick's life on their fifth wedding anniversary she had concocted a plausible but worrying version of her life in a diary that was deliberately hidden from sight but eventually discovered by the police.
"Nick loved a girl who doesn't exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality....The way some women change fashion regularly. I change personalities."
It is not surprising that Nick is frustrated by his marriage, constantly asking himself,"Who are you?" and "What are you thinking?
The woman that he adored with the "brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity" for knowledge transforms into an abrasive person wanting to hurt others. She bore little resemblance to the woman he had happily married. She became the "new, brittle, bitter Amy" after shedding her "pile of skin and soul on the floor." What happened to the Amazing Amy? Of course she wasn't real, she was a character created by her parents for a money-spinning series of adventure stories! A symbol, a walking ideal. A perfectionist. Desperate to be flawless.
The diary also unravels mysteries about Amy's stalkers, Amy's "obsessions." We read shocking inserts about Hlary Handy who wanted to be Amazing Amy, imitating her and indicating that she also wanted to replace Amy, even being brazen enough to approach Amy's mother, Marybeth and informing her:"I'm going to kill Amy and be your new Amy."
Then there was Desi Collings, so obsessed with Amy. They dated for a year before Amy called off the relationship. He took an overdose and was found naked in her bed. a noirish thriller. So, what did happen to Amy? Why did she want to buy a gun to protect herself from her husband?
Was she a victim OR a predator?
Nick, on the other hand had been wiped clean of love, feeling utterly destroyed by his nemesis. His parents had had an unhappy marriage, his father despised women. Did Nick turn into a misogynist just like his father? Was his wife such a problem that needed to be dealt with? A bitter voice that needed to be squelched?
When Amy disappeared Nick acts in a weird fashion, not the way an innocent man should look, far too casual, constantly reminded of his bizarre behaviour by Go, his twin.
"You'd think you mislaid a damn umbrella!"
She unravels lies upon lies from a brother she trusted and becomes scared for both of them. Why would Nick buy so many expensive things, 212,000$ worth on his credit card and store it in the shed behind Go's house?
Nick had told Amy that he couldn't take any more stress. He couldn't handle one more thing to worry about and was cracking under the pressure.
So, was Amy right? Was something horribly wrong with her husband? Had he shoved her so hard that she had banged her head? Had he shown absolute disgust in wanting to hurt her so badly that he might have killed her? The police thought so. So did the American public who vilified him. The enquiry soon turned into a witch hunt and before long Nick was sruggling with his alibis whilst the rest of the world believed him guilty of the murder of his wife.
A disclosure by a so-called friend sends shock waves rocketing with the revelation that Amy was pregnant. Nick's real life nightmares come to haunt him: they were about being wronged, about being trapped, a victim of forces beyond his control. He knows that it is only time before his arrest and under Missouri law, facing the death penalty.
The sinister chant of Nick did you kill Amy? adds to the eerie Gothic nature that creeps like a germ throughout the story. But did he kill her?
But what is the truth? I mean the real truth? What happened to Amy? Is it a Gothic tale of the heroine who makes the wrong choice, selects the wrong mate and pays the ultimate price? It is a chilling tale of possessiveness, rage, brutality and fear which makes compelling reading.
The Financial Times offered a sound word of advice: Read it and stay single.
Publisher: Orion Books. ISBN: 978-0-7538-2766-6.
The film is due to be released on 3rd October 2014 Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne and Rosamund Pike plays Amy. Flynn has written the screen play. Expected to be a huge hit. Director: David Fincher. (Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network and the 2011 English language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) Flynn worked with Fincher on the screenplay.
"There was something thrilling about taking this piece of work that I'd spent two years painstakingly putting together, with all its eight million LEGO pieces, and taking a hammer to it, bashing it apart, and reassembling it into a movie." Entertainment Weekly.
Performances by Affleck and Pike have been described as being "chilling."
"The resulting film, like Fincher's other work, will crawl deep into your head and make a home next to all the other dark thoughts, worries and what ifs." Josh Woodfin.
Every picture tells a story. Whether pictorially depicted or intimately written such as a diary kept by our female protagonist, there are always (at least) two sides to every story and truths to unravel from the dishonesty and deceit.
In a dysfunctional marriage, with mismatched relationships the faults lie with both parties. Nick and Amy's marriage might initially seem blissful with Amy swooning over Nick's socks fat with love on their first wedding anniversary before it turns pear-shaped and oppressive shortly afterwards.
Amy was from an affluent background, the "product" of her parents' wealth based on the Amazing Amy series. Her childhood in fact, every part of her growing up had been documented and exposed to American society and she had a reputation to live up to. She had to be amazing, mediocrity was just not good enough for this socialite of a New Yorker. She had to be: brilliant, creative, kind, thoughtful, witty and happy. When Amy met Nick she was playing the girl with style, the Cool Girl. She was pretending to be the kind of woman desired by men such as Nick.
When Amy disappeared from Nick's life on their fifth wedding anniversary she had concocted a plausible but worrying version of her life in a diary that was deliberately hidden from sight but eventually discovered by the police.
"Nick loved a girl who doesn't exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality....The way some women change fashion regularly. I change personalities."
It is not surprising that Nick is frustrated by his marriage, constantly asking himself,"Who are you?" and "What are you thinking?
The woman that he adored with the "brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity" for knowledge transforms into an abrasive person wanting to hurt others. She bore little resemblance to the woman he had happily married. She became the "new, brittle, bitter Amy" after shedding her "pile of skin and soul on the floor." What happened to the Amazing Amy? Of course she wasn't real, she was a character created by her parents for a money-spinning series of adventure stories! A symbol, a walking ideal. A perfectionist. Desperate to be flawless.
The diary also unravels mysteries about Amy's stalkers, Amy's "obsessions." We read shocking inserts about Hlary Handy who wanted to be Amazing Amy, imitating her and indicating that she also wanted to replace Amy, even being brazen enough to approach Amy's mother, Marybeth and informing her:"I'm going to kill Amy and be your new Amy."
Then there was Desi Collings, so obsessed with Amy. They dated for a year before Amy called off the relationship. He took an overdose and was found naked in her bed. a noirish thriller. So, what did happen to Amy? Why did she want to buy a gun to protect herself from her husband?
Was she a victim OR a predator?
Nick, on the other hand had been wiped clean of love, feeling utterly destroyed by his nemesis. His parents had had an unhappy marriage, his father despised women. Did Nick turn into a misogynist just like his father? Was his wife such a problem that needed to be dealt with? A bitter voice that needed to be squelched?
When Amy disappeared Nick acts in a weird fashion, not the way an innocent man should look, far too casual, constantly reminded of his bizarre behaviour by Go, his twin.
"You'd think you mislaid a damn umbrella!"
She unravels lies upon lies from a brother she trusted and becomes scared for both of them. Why would Nick buy so many expensive things, 212,000$ worth on his credit card and store it in the shed behind Go's house?
Nick had told Amy that he couldn't take any more stress. He couldn't handle one more thing to worry about and was cracking under the pressure.
So, was Amy right? Was something horribly wrong with her husband? Had he shoved her so hard that she had banged her head? Had he shown absolute disgust in wanting to hurt her so badly that he might have killed her? The police thought so. So did the American public who vilified him. The enquiry soon turned into a witch hunt and before long Nick was sruggling with his alibis whilst the rest of the world believed him guilty of the murder of his wife.
A disclosure by a so-called friend sends shock waves rocketing with the revelation that Amy was pregnant. Nick's real life nightmares come to haunt him: they were about being wronged, about being trapped, a victim of forces beyond his control. He knows that it is only time before his arrest and under Missouri law, facing the death penalty.
The sinister chant of Nick did you kill Amy? adds to the eerie Gothic nature that creeps like a germ throughout the story. But did he kill her?
But what is the truth? I mean the real truth? What happened to Amy? Is it a Gothic tale of the heroine who makes the wrong choice, selects the wrong mate and pays the ultimate price? It is a chilling tale of possessiveness, rage, brutality and fear which makes compelling reading.
The Financial Times offered a sound word of advice: Read it and stay single.
Publisher: Orion Books. ISBN: 978-0-7538-2766-6.
The film is due to be released on 3rd October 2014 Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne and Rosamund Pike plays Amy. Flynn has written the screen play. Expected to be a huge hit. Director: David Fincher. (Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network and the 2011 English language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) Flynn worked with Fincher on the screenplay.
"There was something thrilling about taking this piece of work that I'd spent two years painstakingly putting together, with all its eight million LEGO pieces, and taking a hammer to it, bashing it apart, and reassembling it into a movie." Entertainment Weekly.
Performances by Affleck and Pike have been described as being "chilling."
"The resulting film, like Fincher's other work, will crawl deep into your head and make a home next to all the other dark thoughts, worries and what ifs." Josh Woodfin.
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