Well, I am not sure how this happened yet again... ok, I do... getting waaaay behind in book posts. If you include the book I am reading now there is a whopping 10 books to catch-up on. Funny enough, I thought my reading would slow down during the London Olympics, but I wisely chose to read some no-brainer books ... so at the moment, August 2012 might break the record for most pages read in one month since I've been tracking all this going back to 2006!
Anyhow... time to play catch-up (again!)... as I have some time "today," I am going to try to get a bunch of entries ready and have them post over the next week or so...
But first, going back to a book from June and the runner-away "it" book of this summer... Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.
But as it is so reliant on plot twists, there is really little one can say about the book. In fact, I got pretty upset at one of friends on Facebook who gave away the first third of the book in a status update, saying her friends wouldn't read the book if they didn't know about one particular twist. I'd say I would be more pissed having that first section of the book ruined, ha! But heck, even the Table of Contents is a give-away, so I say avoid that as well if you can! If you are looking for some description of the book, let's just say it the story of Nick and Amy, the latter mysteriously disappearing on their 5th anniversary, the titular "gone girl."
While well ensconced in the mystery/thriller page-turner genre, the book is equally thrilling in Flynn's devastating (blistering!) portrayal of the destruction of a marriage. There a very keen observations about human nature, particularly in the light of today's sometimes wacky society, the increased pressures with the rise of the Internet, media, rough economic times, etc.-- all of which also get a good, darkly satirical, spanking from Flynn as well.
I had to laugh, when something I was thinking about Nick and Amy throughout much of the book, was actually said "aloud":
"You two are the most f#cked-up people I have ever met, and I specialize in f#cked-up people."
This was one crazy-ass, roller-coaster ride of a book.
Alas, there were still a few things that nagged at me. Much of the first half consists of Amy's diary entries. They just didn't have the "feel" or quality/style of a diary entry: too lengthy, too detailed, too much of a novel-like re-telling vs. a "sit-down-and-write" spontaneous approach.
And while all thoroughly entertaining, things head off the cliff/go quite over-the-top. It got me wondering if Flynn's intent was for the novel to be more of a dark/black comedy which would thus welcome all this creative line-crossing or a straight-up genre thriller. If it was the latter, it was all a bit too much. Lastly, while it may grew on me a bit, was not a big fan of the ending.
Ratings-wise, I thoroughly enjoyed the front half of the book and had 4.5 stars floating in my head... a steady 4 stars throughout much, but the cumulative affect of those above-mentioned "nags" had it settle down to 3.5 star. For Goodreads, I rounded it up to 4 stars due to overall entertainment value and that extra insightful-ness that I felt pulled it out or above being a pure throw-away genre thriller.
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