Awards
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2013 Puddly Award for Fiction
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2012 Powell's Staff Top 5s
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Staff Pick
Both a cautionary tale for bad men and a clarion call for unhappy women, Gone Girl is a compelling page-turner that does not let up. Every few pages another bombshell drops, and the tension is exquisite! While Nick Dunne lackadaisically plans to show up for his fifth-wedding-anniversary celebration, his wife, Amy, has gone to the usual lengths by preparing poetry, a clue-filled treasure hunt, and a year-appropriate gift. There's obviously a slight disparity in their views on the occasion, and in fact, there is disparity in everything in the Dunnes' marriage. When Nick comes home to the scene of a struggle and his wife has disappeared, the nightmare to follow is miles beyond anything he imagines. Chilling, smart, and absolutely humming with barely contained panic, Gone Girl is one fast-paced, thrilling read you shouldn't miss. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Marriage can be a real killer.
One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work "draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction."Gone Girl's toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media — as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents — the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter — but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.
Review
"[W]hat looks like a straightforward case of a husband killing his wife to free himself from a bad marriage morphs into something entirely different in Flynn's hands. As evidenced by her previous work (Sharp Objects, 2006, and Dark Places, 2009), she possesses a disturbing worldview, one considerably amped up by her twisted sense of humor. Both a compelling thriller and a searing portrait of marriage, this could well be Flynn's breakout novel. It contains so many twists and turns that the outcome is impossible to predict." Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Flynn cements her place among that elite group of mystery/thriller writers who unfailingly deliver the goods....Once again Flynn has written an intelligent, gripping tour de force, mixing a riveting plot and psychological intrigue with a compelling prose style that unobtrusively yet forcefully carries the reader from page to page." Library Journal (starred review)
Review
"Gone Girl is one of the best — and most frightening — portraits of psychopathy I've ever read. Nick and Amy manipulate each other — with savage, merciless and often darkly witty dexterity. This is a wonderful and terrifying book about how the happy surface normality and the underlying darkness can become too closely interwoven to separate." Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful Place and Into the Woods
Review
"The plot has it all. I have no doubt that in a year's time I'm going to be saying that this is my favorite novel of 2012. Brilliant." Kate Atkinson,New York Times bestselling author of Started Early, Took My Dog and Case Histories
Review
"Gone Girl builds on the extraordinary achievements of Gillian Flynn's first two books and delivers the reader into the claustrophobic world of a failing marriage. We all know the story, right? Beautiful wife disappears; husband doesn't seem as distraught as he should be under the circumstances. But Flynn takes this sturdy trope of the 24-hour news cycle and turns it inside out, providing a devastating portrait of a marriage and a timely, cautionary tale about an age in which everyone's dreams seem to be imploding." Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Thing and I'd Know You Anywhere
Review
"Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is like Scenes from a Marriage remade by Alfred Hitchcock, an elaborate trap that's always surprising and full of characters who are entirely recognizable. It's a love story wrapped in a mystery that asks the eternal question of all good relationships gone bad: How did we get from there to here?" Adam Ross, New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Peanut
Review
"Just this minute I finished a week of feeling betrayed, misled, manipulated, provoked, and misjudged, not to mention having all my expectations confounded. Considering how compulsively I kept coming back for more, I am seriously thinking of going back to page one and doing it all again." Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur
Review
"I cannot say this urgently enough: you have to read Gone Girl. It's as if Gillian Flynn has mixed us a martini using battery acid instead of vermouth and somehow managed to make it taste really, really good. Gone Girl is delicious and intoxicating and delightfully poisonous. It's smart (brilliant, actually). It's funny (in the darkest possible way). The writing is jarringly good, and the story is, well...amazing. Read the book and you'll discover — among many other treasures — just how much freight (and fright) that last adjective can bear." Scott Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Ruins and A Simple Plan
Review
"Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl reminds me of Patricia Highsmith at the top of her game. With Gone Girl, she's placed herself at the top of the short list of authors who have mastered the art of crafting a tense story with terrifyingly believable characters." Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Fallen
Review
"Gone Girl manages to be so many stellar things all at once — suspenseful, inventive, chilling, funny, unsettling — as well as beautifully plotted and fiercely well-written. Gillian Flynn is a thrilling writer." Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man
Review
"Reminds suspense readers of the old Alfred Hitchcock stories....This is one puzzle you do not want to miss." Amy Lignor, Suspense Magazine
Review
"Gone Girl is a superbly constructed, ingeniously paced and absolutely terrifying. You begin by thinking that all marriages are a bit like this: they start with high hopes and get bogged down in nagging and money worries. But then the psycho-drama creeps up on you with chilling power. A five-star suspense mystery." A.N. Wilson, Reader's Digest (UK)
Review
"Gone Girl is as skillfully creepy as her previous work....A chilling, stylish read about another unknowable woman." Elle (UK)
Review
"The married duo in Gillian Flynn's superb third novel takes the idea of unreliable narrators to a whole new level. When Nick Dunne's lovely wife Amy is violently abducted on their fifth wedding anniversary, the police and the press immediately put Nick in the frame for her murder. Amy's friends testify that she was afraid of her husband, and the missing woman's diary backs up their impressions. Nick's computer is full of inexplicable searches, his mobile phone is plagued by mysterious calls and his own inner monologue offers a darker perspective on amazing Amy and the state of their turbulent marriage. Flynn keeps the accelerator firmly to the floor, ratcheting up the tension with wildly unexpected plot twists, contradictory stories and the tantalizing feeling that nothing is as it seems. Deviously good." Marie Claire (UK)
Synopsis
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Marriage can be a real killer. One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work "draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction." Gone Girl's toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet? With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.
Synopsis
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The "mercilessly entertaining" (Vanity Fair) instant classic "about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships" (Lev Grossman, Time). NAMED ONE OF TIME'S TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE AND ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times - People - Entertainment Weekly - O: The Oprah Magazine - Slate - Kansas City Star - USA Today - Christian Science Monitor
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle - St. Louis Post Dispatch - Chicago Tribune - HuffPost - Newsday
"Absorbing . . . In masterly fashion, Flynn depicts the unraveling of a marriage--and of a recession-hit Midwest--by interweaving the wife's diary entries with the husband's first-person account."--New Yorker
"Ms. Flynn writes dark suspense novels that anatomize violence without splashing barrels of blood around the pages . . . Ms. Flynn has much more up her sleeve than a simple missing-person case. As Nick and Amy alternately tell their stories, marriage has never looked so menacing, narrators so unreliable."--The Wall Street Journal
"The story unfolds in precise and riveting prose . . . even while you know you're being manipulated, searching for the missing pieces is half the thrill of this wickedly absorbing tale."--O: The Oprah Magazine
About the Author
GILLIAN FLYNN is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dark Places, which was a New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite, Weekend TODAY Top Summer Read, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction choice; and the Dagger Award winner Sharp Objects, which was an Edgar nominee for Best First novel, a BookSense pick, and a Barnes & Noble Discover selection. Her work has been published in twenty-eight countries. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.