Entertainment Editorial: June’s Book of the Month Club Pick is…Gone Girl!

click on the book image to pick-up a copy

[Buy this book from the link above]

Ordinarily, for my book of the month club pick, I like to pick a lesser-known book that is deserving of your awareness but—-for whatever reason—-just never caught on in the way it should have. However, June’s Book of the Month Club pick is “Gone Girl,” a new thriller that is already burning up the bestseller charts, and for great reason. I was only halfway finished with this book (read over the course of a mere weekend) when I knew for certain it would be this month’s pick. Having finished it, I can say it’s a lock for just about every “Ten Best of the Year” list you can think of come December.

For those that aren’t yet familiar with Gillian Flynn’s extraordinary third novel, “Gone Girl” is the story of Nick and Amy Dunne, once-wealthy Manhattanites who are forced to relocate to Nick’s shitty hometown in Missouri after he loses his job as a magazine writer. [It’s all under the guise of caring for his sick parents, but it’s really so Nick can nurse his wounded ego back to health in the town he was prom king of.] The novel begins on their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy mysteriously goes missing, and the cops (plus a leering media) begin to wonder about Nick, as the book alternates between first-person chapters Nick narrates and Amy’s diary entries leading up to the day she disappeared. “Gone Girl” is equal parts twist-filled mystery thriller, domestic drama, crime-media satire (the book hilariously spoofs all those lurid Dateline specials where the husband is the first, last, and only suspect), and one of the most realistic portrayals of psychopathy I’ve ever seen or read.

Questions begin to mount up about Nick, who is caught in several lies that keep getting bigger, but did he really kill Amy? I have no intention of spoiling what happens in this book, but there’s an absolutely brilliant twist almost exactly halfway through the book that elevates it from a very good mystery into a frightening character study of an entirely new type of villain.

I will reveal that Gillian Flynn exposes herself to be a masterful writer, juggling not only a first-rate plot, but fleshing out every single character, no matter how small. [I cracked up at how the residents of this sleepy, economically depressed Missouri town keep inserting themselves into the investigation, saying practically anything as long as the cameras will film it.] Yet where she really excels is in the characters of Nick and Amy, successfully getting us to believe that these are two different people in a way few authors manage. She just “gets” how details can change depending on who’s telling the story, and how couples will subtly try to pull you to their “side” in that telling.

Both realistic yet riveting, funny yet frightening, entertaining yet deeply truthful, this is exactly the kind-of book you should spend your summer reading. Mostly because people will still be talking about it next summer. So read “Gone Girl,” and experience a buzz-worthy book that lives up to the conversation.