Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

I found myself very caught up in this book, but remain a little unsure what to think about it.  As you may know, Gone Girl is the story of a husband who returns home to find his wife missing, interspersed with excerpts from her diary leading up to the day of the disappearance.  I read it as part of my commitment to the Academy Award nominees for this year. 
Read While Walking: Books based on Academy Award Nominees


From a story perspective, it's fun walking through the mystery of the disappearance and trying to piece together a full and objective narrative.  Once an additional narrator appears, it becomes more of a "howdunit" than a "whodunit", and for myself some of the suspense and tension evaporates at that point.  I enjoy "howdunit" novels, but I need to be invested in the protagonist, interested in his or her character and character development, and probably wanting to see some justice done.  In this case, while there remains some action to be developed, overall I think it becomes more like a jigsaw puzzle because I wasn't invested in the characters.   At first it's fascinating to try to discover the picture and some of the details, but at a certain point it's just a matter of putting the pieces in their proper places to finish it off.


Part of the reason I see it that way is that it's hard to get attached to the various narrators.  There isn't much growth of the characters, and for myself I wouldn't say I found any of the narrators likeable or relatable.  While the protagonist may not deserve what that narrator gets, it's nevertheless difficult to feel sympathy based on the protagonist's own actions and perspectives.  (As you may be able to tell, I'm trying hard to preserve the fun of piecing the puzzle together without giving away the picture).


If I had to pin down my difficulty in being fully engaged in this novel and having it be a more lasting enjoyment, it would be the authorial voice.  There are three principal narrators in the novel, if you include the diary entries.  However, each of them speaks with substantially the same voice.  They use similar terminology; they are each fairly self absorbed; their thought processes seem like carefully considered, evaluated, literate navel-gazing.  Even the artifice of the diary entries do not differ significantly in writing style from what appears to be contemporaneous thought.  Yet curiously, despite the artificial tone, none of the narrators seem to be "unreliable narrators".  What they see and relate appears to be objectively truthful within the confines of the story.


I suspected, as I neared the end of the novel, that we would be given an appropriately "meta" answer for this, namely that this very book we were reading was the account of the events authored by the protagonist. But it appears not.


So what justification is there that everyone's thoughts are so artificial, removed and consistently focused only on the individual narrator?  As noted above, my initial reaction was that this was the author's voice, not distinguished between characters.  Not an unusual failing, but one that constitutes a bit of a pet peeve of mine, since it bounces me out of the story and the characters and forces me to recognize that I'm reading an author's thoughts and words put into the thoughts and words of the characters.


Instead, I think now that while this technique creates a separation between the reader and the characters, it could have been an intentional technique to highlight the premise of the novel.  Namely, that everyone is always "putting on" a character (the Cool Girl etc.) for the world to see, but all of it is artifice.  No one ever gets to see the real person underneath, not only because they don't reveal it, but because perhaps there is no "real person" underneath.  It's just a series of masks over nothingness.  And everyone knows, or should realize if they turned their minds to it, that these are only masks, but is not interested enough in knowing a real person to want to look deeper.  So ultimately, the best a person could hope for in a connection with someone else is to have the comfort to pursue their own selfish desires without concern for what the other person may think.


As such, an artificial writing style, intended to highlight the artificiality of each of the characters narrating, brings home the artifice to the reader and forces the reader to confront the mask being worn by the narrator themselves and perhaps recognize that as a commentary on people in general and realize the ultimate premise of the novel.  In that case, my issue is less with the writing style than the premise, and but I still hesitate to recommend Gone Girl.