"Gone Girl"

Gone Girl

Flynn, G. (2012). Gone Girl. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group. 

Genre: Thriller/Mystery, Adult Fiction

Nick and Amy are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. But, Amy is nowhere to be found. She’s missing. She’s gone. Amy’s disappearance becomes big news quickly and Nick is almost immediately pegged as the perpetrator. Flynn switches the point-of-view back and forth between Nick, in the now, and passages from Amy’s diary. And it seems the two are in completely different marriages. One thing seems to hold the truth, an annual scavenger hunt planned by Amy has scattered clues all over town. Will the clues lead us to Amy? Is Nick guilty? Is anything what it seems?

Wowzers! What a book!

When people ask me why I do not ever want to get married...I will refer them to this book :).  Ha ha, but seriously, marriages like this are not rare. Well, this is extreme and fiction but people are dysfunctional.

Okay, back to being serious. Flynn’s writing was perfect. Yes, perfect. Not in an Amy kind of way perfect, but perfect perfect.  And intriguing. It is absolutely scary how real the characters are. Flynn spent a lot of time developing their personalities, voice, mannerisms, etc. and it paid off because their characters are fully developed, multifaceted and it is easy to visualize an accurate depiction of them.

A theme or message I took away from the book is, people are natural pretenders, Nick and Amy are pretenders to the world but because Flynn took us inside their heads, we were able to see them for whom they really were. Two individuals so stuck on issues from their childhoods, they cannot function appropriately. Amy is controlling, obsessive, and ruthless. Nick is cowardly, insecure, and emotionally empty. 

Flynn held my attention throughout the book with her structure and insight into human thinking. Skewed patterns of cognitive processes fascinate me and Flynn captured this phenomenon, so well. People pretend to be cool, good, or whatever they deem favorable because these ideals do not actually exist, we all just want them to.

Flynn has some side agendas with this book. The bashing of the media and internet is almost like a second plot line. A good one, but it probably was not necessary.

*An afterthought: Go, Nick’s twin sister, was my favorite character. She is a nice contrast to these off-putting main characters with her honesty, loyalty, and humor. She was introduced to us as the dysfunctional one but girl has a good head on her shoulders.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a thriller, a mystery, or something different from the typical read. Kudos to Flynn.

Probuditi!

Van Allsburg, Chris. (2006). Probuditi! Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Literary Genre: Fiction (Picture Story Book)

Calvin’s birthday gift is tickets for him and a friend to go see “Lomax the Magnificent, the world-famous magician and hypnotist”. After the performance, Calvin and his friend decide to do some hypnotizing of their own and shortly after Calvin’s little sister Trudy is barking, whining, panting, and walking on all fours like a dog. The real magic of this story is the humorous events that take place as the boys spend the afternoon trying to snap Trudy back to normal. Van Allsburg’s incredible, sepia pencil drawings will hold the attention of readers and pull them back into the 1940s where this story takes place.

I absolutely love this story. Many of Chris Van Allsburg’s books are magical but the realistic nature of this story makes it much more magical to me. Calvin and Trudy’s relationship is portrayed very true to the complicated but loving dynamics of siblings and is one in which readers will most certainly relate to. The 1940s setting is a nice touch because it represents the perfect childhood neighborhood and again readers will be able to make connections to their own childhood shenanigans. This story could be used in the classroom for a variety of things, but I would focus on the development of the relationships between characters.