This month’s book recommendation from Emma at Bookish in Crickhowell
Who are you?
What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren’t made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife?
It was one of those books I kept thinking about while I was doing other things, wondering when I’d be able to get stuck into it again.
The writing is sharp, observant and witty, with two very strong narrative voices – the story is told from the points of view of Nick, who comes home one day to find his wife Amy has disappeared amid signs of a struggle, and Amy herself, through old diaries that tell the story of their relationship.
What complicates matters is that Nick seems far from devastated about Amy’s disappearance, and not only the American media and the local police force but we as readers can’t help but be suspicious. What is Nick withholding from us? And why are his feelings towards his wife, whose diaries suggest she’s desperate to make the marriage work, so ambivalent?
This set-up makes for an intriguing but fairly standard well-crafted whodunnit. However, it’s about halfway through the book, when we realise that Amy, too, might not have been entirely honest with us, that Gone Girl really starts to stand out from the crowd.
