A Book a Month: Gone Girl

Those of you who spend time reading blogs are probably pretty familiar with the idea of making lists of things to accomplish before your next birthday. This year, I made a "29 before 30" list. One of the things on the list was to read one book per month. The first book that I read was Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn. It was recommended to me by my boss, who said it just reminded her of me. After reading the book, I'm not sure if it's a compliment or not, being that it's about a relationship that has fallen apart and the diverging tales of where things went wrong.

One of my favorite characteristics of any novel is multiple narrators. Gone Girl is told from both the husband and the wife's perspective, each chapter alternating between voices. The husband's voice comes at the present, in the middle of a murder investigation that, throughout the novel, seems to be closing in on him. The wife's voice mainly comes from the past - journal entries detailing her marriage.

In many ways, the novel is brilliant and unexpected. You start to realize that all of the characters are not the kind of people you first thought and that good and evil might not be mutually exclusive. No one in this novel can be defined as good OR evil, but are rather different gray shades of each. The two main characters are both hateable, which makes them loveable in a way.

I have to say, the one disappointment for me was the ending. While I think Flynn wanted to create a "and they lived happily ever after... fucked up entirely, but happily" kind of ending, the last part of the novel kind of petered out. The rhythm was gone and the ending seemed rushed and not quite as well-thought-out as the rest of the book.

Out of 5 stars, this would fall somewhere between 3 and 4. I definitely liked it and possibly really liked it, but I didn't love it and it didn't fall into the favorite book of the moment category for me. Regardless, it's definitely worth a read!