They live a quintessential life in a quintessential town, but underneath that façade lurks something much darker. In “Gone Girl” Gillian Flynn begins the story on the morning of Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary. On the outside, everything looks normal. Amy has arranged her annual scavenger hunt for Nick, they kiss after breakfast is made, Nick goes to work, and then Amy disappears.
Nick may seem to be the golden boy of his youth, but he’s no longer in the running for husband-of-the-year when the police think he killed Amy. Before they moved back to Nick’s hometown in Missouri, they were the golden couple. They had a comfortable brownstone, spiffy writing jobs, and their life at home was perfect.
But Amy reminds the reader that identity is an allusion. She was the “cool girl” when she met Nick, but it’s an act girls put on for certain guys. No one is really the “cool girl.” You are a combination of everything society says you have to be; she cooks French food, is fluent in Spanish, and loves European culture.
The story unfolds from Nick’s perspective in the present and Amy’s perspective of the past in her girly, frivolous diaries. The reader traces their tumultuous relationship and how they got to where they are today.
While not the darkest book that Flynn has written, the novel is a deep exploration of the lengths people will go to make society think everything is happy-go-lucky. Nick and Amy both put up fronts. Nick is all easy smiles and sure responses when he talks to the press, but on the inside he is the one who’s dying because they think he did this. And he knows he has thought about killing Amy because their marriage is not perfect; it feel like a prison.
Sorry, no related posts found.
