Gone Girl

⚖The case for it

A wife disappears on the morning of their fifth anniversary and the husband handles it badly on camera, which is all the town and the cable channels need. Flynn alternates his present-day chapters against her diary and gives the two voices genuinely different rhythms. The Cool Girl passage stands on its own as commentary and is what readers quote years later. The recession-hollowed Missouri town does real work rather than scenery. Critics call it “one of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Nobody here is bearable: “self-centered, spoiled, pathetic people,” and a large share of readers never find anyone here worth their company. The prose shows off, and the profanity gets named as excessive rather than earned. Readers who see the shape coming early say the second half loses its charge. The worldview is a “miasma of wretchedness and hate” that leaves people drained. And a minority argue the book’s treatment of its female lead is regressive rather than sharp.

— the honest librarian

10h

honest hours

14

sittings