"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn

Well... it's been a long while since any of us posted on this blog. Guess life caught up with us!

In any case, it took convalescence and a night of sleepless tossing in bed (on account of the coughing) when it suddenly came to me that maybe... I should try to blog something here in our long forgotten blog.

So here it goes.

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"Gone Girl" was something I first across as a book, didn't find it interesting on account of the introduction at the back of the book, but later caught in the cinemas, and decided to pick up on the book on my Kindle one day. The movie adaptation was intriguing enough to make me think, well, maybe the book had more to offer, given the typical constraints in a movie length which had to keep the audience going.

The plot synopsis can be found courtesy of Good Reads. The story is told from both the perspective of husband (Nick Dunne) and wife (Amy Elliott), criss-crossing across events.

I would classify Gone Girl as pop fiction (which was why it didn't interest me at that time because I thought it was your typical husband wakes up to find wife gone story), and even after reading the book, I still do.

[Alert: spoiler ahead]

Having said that, I have a more nuanced reaction to it now, seeing it as a cynical reflection on relationships and how they play out when a couple's relationship, which to me is always private and rarely understood by outsiders, is trotted out and dissected in the public glare. I do not know if the author's intent was to villanise Amy and casting Nick as the poor victim, but my personal opinion is there are no good guys in this story.  Both Nick and Amy used public, and social media, and their stereotypes to their respective advantage as they played their dangerous game of mental chess to outwit each other (oops, spoiler, Amy didn't die).  Amy played up her role of loving but abused wife, whilst Nick displayed newfound media manipulation tactics in his portrayal of a repentant husband who had strayed and is living in regret.

Having the story told from intersecting perspectives and from the first person level really added a level of intimacy to the story.

The textbook ending of a reunited couple left me cold.  Not "cold" in the classic sense of disappointment but "disturbed", by the glue that ultimately binds a couple's relationship.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 on the geek scale