52/100: Gone Girl

So school's starting again on Monday (boo).  And, depending on my reading list for Children's Library Materials, I should be able to make my goal of 100 books this year! I hope.  We all know reading-related disasters could happen at any time.

Anyways, I was reflecting tonight over the best book I read over the summer.  And, really, there was no contest for the winner:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Now, I don't normally read suspense--and indeed, when I had to read a suspense novel for class last semester I wasn't really impressed with the book I chose.  But this book piqued my interest for an entirely different reason: people kept letting it go overdue.  Most people are pretty on top of renewing their library materials, but for some reason, when I told people this book was overdue, they'd say "I know, but I just HAVE to finish it."

Okay, I thought.  This book must be good if people are willing to pay fines to finish it.

So, without knowing anything about the book (I mean, I hadn't even read the synopsis on the jacket), I decided to put it on reserve.  But then I saw there were like 190 reserves on it so I said screw it and decided to wait.

But then! As if the library gods knew, it came through as a donation.  When I saw it on our for sale shelf the next day, I snapped it up.  If it's worth 10 cents a day to read, surely it was worth $3 to own?

OH MAN YES IT WAS.

This book is MESSED UP.  I mean, REALLY MESSED UP.

The story takes place in a fictional town in Missouri, along the Mississippi River.  It follows two people, Amy and Nick Dunne, who are facing some rough waters in the marriage.  On their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing.  The novel covers the investigation through the alternating perspectives of both Amy and Nick.  I can't really say a whole lot without giving things away.

The main point here is that this book is not what it seems.  And Gillian Flynn does an amazing job at drawing you in.  The book is divided into three parts.  In part one, everything seems pretty status quo for a suspense novel, but something is not quite right about it. You can't really put a finger on why things are off, but you know there's more to this story.  And then part two starts, and I swear to God, I have seriously never hated a fictional character so much in my LIFE.  Every time I turned the page, all I could say was "I hate this person.  I really fucking hate them." And then your rush through part 3 because HOLY CRAP YOU CAN'T BELIEVE THESE THINGS ARE HAPPENING.  You really can't believe the horrible things characters do to each other.

And the whole story is just...disturbing (but in a good-literature sort of way).  After I finished the book I felt the need to put it down and physically walk away from the book.  I was SO unsettled.  Almost in the same way I was mega-depressed after I finished The Bell Jar.  You know, the good kind of literature-empathy, as it were.

As awesome as this book was, though, I have two small complaints.  And these are mostly due to the fact that I grew up in Missouri.
1) Although Flynn uses a fictional town in Missouri, the location she is describing is geographically impossible.  North Carthage (the town in the book) is where Nick grew up, and it's described as being close enough to Hannibal so that Nick could have worked there as a kid, but no more than 45 minutes from St. Louis.  There is no location in Missouri--that borders the Mississippi--in which you are, at most, 30 minutes from Hannibal and 45 minutes from St. Louis.  St. Louis and Hannibal are 2 hours apart.
2) As you are driving towards St. Louis (as Nick does), the Arch does not "creep up the skyline." It is WAY downtown, and therefore you literally don't see it until you are in downtown and it peeks around a building.  (Now, coming from the Illinois side is a different story).

BUT THOSE THINGS ASIDE, this was truly an awesome book.  Totally recommend it, especially now that they're turning it into a movie.  Be ahead of the curve!