Welcome to To Be Honest, HBT where I use my favorite quotes from a recent book I’ve read, categorize them, and explain my thoughts on the book as a whole. I tend to find meaning in everything, but I don’t really force it. Most “reviews” are spoiler free and provide a warning prior to a spoiler-filled section.
This week I’m discussing Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
Literary Gems:
271 NICK
I made it inside, locked myself in. On each side of the door were windows, so I braved it and quickly pulled down the shades, all the while cameras clicking at me, questions called. Nick, did you kill Amy? Once the shades were pulled, it was like covering a canary for the night: The noise out front stopped.
-canary cage. Fantastic.
321 NICK
Suddenly, the suite door swung wide and Sharon Schieber entered, as smooth as if she were being borne by a team of swans. She was a beautiful woman, a woman who had probably never looked girlish. A woman whose nose probably never sweat. She had thick dark hair and giant brown eyes that could look doelike or wicked.
-the description here is great. Swans and then doelike eyes that can look wicked. It’s kind of fascinating to imagine.
Learned Something:
119 AMY
I have learned about bulk shopping my four weeks as a Mississippi River resident. Republicans go to Sam’s Club, Democrats go to Costco. But everyone buys bulk because- unlike Manhattanites- they all have space to store twenty-fours jars of sweet pickles. (No gathering is complete without a lazy Susan full of pickles and Spanish olives right from the jar. And a salt lick.)
– I need to ask some friends who have access to both if this is a thing. How funny?
261 AMY
The girls nods to me, the nod men give each other when they sit down at a bar. She is reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. A sci-fi girl. Abused women like escapism, of course.
-that’s a very interesting idea. Do we enjoy sci-fi and fantasy because we are looking for an escape, delusions of grandeur, or are lacking something in the real world? Or can we just stop analyzing things too much and enjoy creativity for a bit without being flawed?
311 NICK
“Gee thanks.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “I want to go to the police very, very soon with the contents of the woodshed. While the hoi polloi is-”
Just hoi polloi, I thought, not the hoi polloi. It was something Amy had taught me.
-3/11 is my birthday and this is a reference to Ancient Greek. #symbolism #tryingtoohard
Just Funny:
20 NICK
We were too tight: our inside jokes, our edge-of-the-party whispers. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to say this, but you are not Go, you might misconstrue, so I will: My sister and I have never screwed or even thought of screwing. We just really like each other.
-It’s rare isn’t it? I find that very close siblings especially ones that are overly physical with one other after age 12 are strange, but maybe it’s because of this tech generation and I’m the strange one.
98
Two weeks ago, we are in our usual unemployed state: partly dressed, thick with boredom, getting ready to eat a silent breakfast that we’ll stretch over the reading of the newspaper in its entirety. We even read the auto supplement now.
-been there. This got some clapter from me.
196 AMY
I’ve never considered what I would do if my husband attacked me, because I haven’t exactly run in the wife-beating crowd. (I know, Lifetime movie, I know: violence crosses all socioeconomic barriers. But still: Nick?)
-Lifetime dig. Love it.
238 AMY SPOILERS AHEAD Highlight to view
They deserve to think I’m dead, because that’s practically the state they consigned me to: no money, no home, no friends. They deserve to suffer too. If you can’t take care of me while I’m alive, you have made me dead anyway. Just like Nick, who destroyed and rejected the real me a piece at a time- you’re too serious, Amy, you’re too uptight Amy, you overthink things, you analyze too much, you’re no fun anymore, you make me feel useless, Amy, you make me feel bad, Amy. He took away chunks of me with blase swipes: my independence, my pride, my esteem. I gave, and he took and took, He Giving Treed me out of existence.
-Amy is obviously unhinged, but that Giving Tree line makes me love Gillian Flynn for being so creative and nostalgic in her references.
Before you get to the true spoiler section check out the trailer for the movie that just came out on October 3, 2014 in the US.
Based on the below I’m not sure that I would like to see these visually. Will you be going to see Gone Girl in theaters?
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
Catharsis? Not here:
-These series of quotes help illustrate how I feel about the book as a whole. Gillian Flynn is certainly creative. She wrote a very typical murder mystery and added the POV aspect which is always fun. She turned it around with this ending and the insane behavior of the originally perceived victim. Amy’s entire personality frightens me because I agree with some of what she says and parts of her personality. Based on her psychosis this is obviously the moment of the story where I recognize myself in the character and feel deep shame and fear for my life. Unfortunately, this is not a Greek tragedy as described by Aristotle and no catharsis is available! The villain wins and is never punished.
29 AMY
Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don’t land me in one of those relationships where we’re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and “playfully” scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only… and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes.
-a good description of what most people want I think. We fear settling and want an equal.
45 NICK
My wife had a brilliant, popping brain, a greedy curiosity. But her obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and day-trade stocks and fly a plane and look like a runway model doing it, She needed to be Amazing Amy, all the time. Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn’t interest them. Amy’s relentless achieving is greeted with open-palmed acceptance and maybe a bit of pity. It was about the worst outcome possible for my competitive wife: a town of contented also-rans.
-speaks to the OCD and perfectionist nature some people voluntarily choose to have and shows a happier alternative.
55 AMY
Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest- as we swam around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: “Ohhh, that’s so sweet.”
-Amy later calls these men “Dancing Monkeys.”
62 NICK
I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, “Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.” And when I tried to laugh it off and said, well, I didn’t like cherry cobbler either, Marybeth touched Rand’s arm: “Because of the divorce. All those comfort foods, the desserts a family eats together, those are just bad memories for Nick.”
-This is one of my fears: that my psychologist friends are dissecting me incorrectly. Not that I don’t play Freud with people, but at least I do it in my head.
99 AMY
If it were me, I think, I would come back out and tell him to eat, or else I’d raise a finger: Just one minute. I’d be aware of the other person, my spouse, left in the kitchen with plates of eggs. I feel bad that I was thinking that.
“Amy. Please.” He has that look, like I am being unreasonable like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.
– So many people do this. Sometimes when they feel hurt, they judge and only then do they sometimes question their objectivity.
Final Thoughts:
Can be summed up in this quote.
394 AMY
“Everything I do, I do for a reason, Nick,” I say. “Everything I do takes planning and precision and discipline.”
-You sure do, Amy. To be honest, this is one messed up book and it frightens me. I may watch the movie, but I will quickly follow it with a funny movie or an upbeat dance party to try to forget how discomforting it is.
Any quotes I missed? Did you enjoy the book? Will you be seeing the movie? Shoot me your thoughts!
SHARE:
