Summer Reading 2012: Gone Girl

(Gianna)
I know you. You are just like Liz when it comes to your summer reading. You want love: you want a bit of sex, wrapped in a bit more violence, with just a touch of regret, and a few tears. And if it’s a weekend…you want a vampire thrown in for good measure (and you know what I mean by good measure, right ladies!). [Is she talking about another Liz here? I just read a novel about an old man dying of cancer and coping with his regrets. I don't remember any vampires.] And you know, we can suggest books like that by the truckload [no we can't], but for fun we thought this summer we would suggest some books a bit higher on the literary ladder.

I am going to start with what I think is going to be the book of the season, and the one book you really will not be able to put down.  Yep, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn will be the best book you read this summer, I promise. It has everything that our beloved Liz likes in her books: sex, lies, twists, and turns, and plenty of vampires. Okay no vampires, but you don’t really want vampires anyway. Stop saying you do, you don’t! [Gianna has pneumonia right now.  She may be delirious.]

Author Gillian Flynn. There's a twisted mind inside
that head.  Excellent.

Gone Girl is incredibly well written (fans of Dan Chaon and Kate Atkinson alike will not be disappointed), and while Dark Places was fantastic, and Sharp Objects was truly original…this one is better. This is it; this is the book you want to have your summer affair with. But you know, treat it right, and bring it to the beach or home for the weekend to meet your parents.  

One last thing; you will want to talk about this book to anyone who will listen, but you sort of can’t lest you spoil it. My advice is to buy two copies, one for you and one for the person who will ditch a day of work with you to dissect this read.  You should always have a friend like that. 

[I loved this book too. It's the Scott Peterson trial mixed with Double Indemnity.  And Gillian Flynn owns a fat cat and likes to write about twisted, dark women.  My kind of author.]

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

(Gianna)

Gillian Flynn is a bit twisted. Twisted in a good way, like Dan Chaon is twisted. She is a smart, original, and truly gifted writer. But my God she is twisted.

Daniel Woodrell

 Last year I read an excellent biography of Patricia Highsmith.  After I finished it, I immediately bought and read  (I had not up to that point read any of her books) Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Price of Salt.  It is only now occurring to me after reading Flynn’s third excellent novel that she has Highsmith talent. She is that good.

Patricia Highsmith

I often think I have genre blindness. I always forget that Daniel Woodrell  (Winter’s Bone, Tomato Red) and even Kate Atkinson are mystery writers; in the same way I never really realized that Gillian Flynn is a mystery writer. Technically they are so good it doesn’t really matter, I guess, but I wouldn’t hesitate to put Flynn in with this group of top tier writers (and I am including Chaon in here, as I think he is an excellent comparison for those who like a more cerebral mystery).

 

Flynn has you by page one. She does, so, you know, don’t fight it, just give in. She had me on page one of Sharp Objects and Dark Places and she will get you too. Cancel your weekend plans, call in sick to work, order a pizza, and read. Her books have insanely good hooks, and much like Highsmith and Kate Atkinson, oh, the twists and the turns. [Liz here--I like her better than Kate Atkinson.]

 

Gone Girl is a literary novel, a thriller, a mystery, a book club pick that won’t disappoint when the discussion begins, and a beach read all at the same time. And if you want to talk "unputdownable," a completely overused made-up word in publishing; I feel no shame in using it for this book. Not only could I not put it down, but I was actually stressed out all the way through. I mean, it's great when a book entertains…but don’t you really want to be stressed out over a holiday weekend? I know I did.

The wonderfully twisted
Gillian Flynn.

A wife missing. A husband whose lies catch up with him one by one as he becomes the only suspect.  A novel where nothing is what it seems. Oh, and planning a wedding? This will give you pause.  

Best of 2011 Countdown: #26

...Awkward.

You know what's fun about associating with Gianna?  The various ways such a connection pops up in my life.  Random House recently launched a cool book recommendation site called Everyday eBook, and our RH pals asked if they could use some of our blog's reviews on their site.  Who are we to say no?  However, it was a real delight for me to discover that the site also pulled Gianna's biographical statement off of our blog, and it reads:

i am the sales manager for the university of texas press. previously i worked as a sales manager with random house for about 8 years or so until liz sullivan made my life so miserable i had to change jobs. we are now married, have 9 children and vote republican. we are not happy.

It's my fervent hope that everyone I know now knows of my miserable love with Gianna, so you should follow Everyday eBook (even if you don't read eBooks; they have great picks that are available as print books too).  Anyway, moving on to our picks....

Best of 2011 Countdown: #26

Gianna:

Close Your Eyes
Amanda Eyre Ward
Random House

This dark novel was inspired by an actual double murder that happened in the author’s neighborhood when she was a teenager. Ward grew up in a small, quiet town (Rye, NY where I have attended a couple of Random House sales conferences…I could have been killed!), and the fact that such a brutal (and for many years, unsolved) crime could happen would be enough to shake you. As it would turn out, the crime was committed by a drunk teenager that Ward and her group of friends actually knew. The specifics of that crime are bizarre enough that you will want to read about it, trust me, so here is a link to Amanda Eyre Ward’s website where she explains the murder (and there is a picture of Amanda at the tender age of 17…worth the trip to the website).

http://www.amandaward.com/Close_Your_Eyes_For_Readers.php

Amanda Eyre Ward
(the adult version)

Close Your Eyes doesn’t use that plot exactly; it takes that idea and makes it more intimate. Young Lauren and Alex are sleeping in their tree house when their mother is brutally murdered. Their father is convicted of the crime and their lives are forever changed. The books moves ahead twenty years and while the sister and brother remain close (who else would understand this kind of life?), Lauren is convinced that her father is guilty while her brother is sure he is not.  While it would of course be easier for Lauren to try in some way to move forward with her life--her attempts at normalcy--she begins to dig into the past, and things get…interesting.

Amanda has hit a home run with this novel. It's dark, it's creepy, the characters are rich, and the story is perfect. A good comparison is Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places or Sharp Objects…and if you didn’t like those two books, well, what the heck is wrong with you?

Liz:

Your Voice in My Head
Emma Forrest
Other Press

I admit that I am fascinated by memoirs that are heavily psychological.  Just like I'm drawn to damaged characters in fiction, I am most intrigued by memoirs that are more internal, and at the risk of being flippant, the crazier the better.  It's the same reason that I love the HBO series In Treatment, too.  What can I say?  I've got my issues.  So there was no question that I'd be reading Your Voice in My Head when I heard the editor discusses it at our sales conference.  It didn't disappoint.

Emma Forrest

Emma Forrest has composed an intimate--sometimes uncomfortably so--memoir about the two major relationships in her life at a time when she was most vulnerable.  She was 22, living a furious existence in New York that spiraled out of control and toward depression and suicide.  Salvation came in the form of a psychiatrist, a man who became her touchstone as she began to dig herself out of the psychological hole into which she'd slipped.  In the meantime, Forrest meets and falls in love with another man, her "Gypsy Husband," an A-List Hollywood actor (Google Emma Forrest and you'll find out who it is).  Their romance is intense and idyllic...and then troubled.  One day Forrest attempts to make an appointment with her psychiatrist, only to discover that he's died.  The Jiminy Cricket on her shoulder, this man who'd seen into her darkest thoughts without flinching, the voice in her head, was gone, and she realized she'd never known anything about him.

Your Voice in My Head belongs in the same category as Girl, Interrupted and The Glass Castle, though I think that Emma Forrest is a more talented writer.  It's unsettling, loving, moving, and brilliantly written.  I love this book.