Book: Gone Girl
I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Warning: spoilers within! Read after you have finished the book.
Major Characters
Amy Elliott: protagonist gone missing, Nick’s wife
Nick Dunne: protagonist and accused murder, Amy’s husband
Go Dunne: Nick’s sister
Marybeth and Rand Elliot: Amy’s parents and authors of Amazing Amy children’s book series
Detective Rhonda Boney: detective investigating Amy’s disappearance
Detective Jim Gilpin: detective investigating Amy’s disappearance
Andie: Nick’s mistress
Tanner Bolt: Nick’s lawyer
Tommy O’Hara: One of Amy’s old boyfriends and prior accused
Hilary Handy: One of Amy’s high school friends and prior accused of stalking Amy
Desi Collings: One of Amy’s old boyfriends, prior accused and in the end Amy’s fall guy
Greta and Jeff: Transients at cabins where Amy’s hides out
Rebecca: Reporter who gets video interview of Nick
Discussion Topics
Narrative Style
Early on Nick says, “I’m pretty sure I don’t need to say this, but you are not Go, you might misconstrue.” Here he is talking directly to reader. Similarly Amy through her diary speaks directly to the reader.
In Nick Dunne: One Day Gone, Nick says, ““me and go, Mom and Dad, watching the festivities from the very back of the crowd in the vast tarred parking lot, because our father always wanted to be able to leave quickly, from anywhere… But this time our faraway vantage was desirable, because we got to take in the full scope of the Event…” Do you feel that as a reader you were far enough away to take in the full event? Why or why not?
Why do you think Gillian Flynn employed this tactic? Did you feel more drawn to the characters than you otherwise would have if they hadn’t been speaking directly to you? Do you think they appeared more or less believable in this direct narrative?
One of Amy’s past suitors and accused, says “Amy likes to play God when she’s not happy. Old testament God.” How about the author? How does Flynn take on the role of God? How do authors in general become omnipresent or invisible?
Empathy Toward Amy and Nick
How did your empathy for each character change over the course of the book? Where did your allegiance lay when you began the novel? At what points did your allegiance swing one way or the other? Whose perspective was more believable during the first section of the book as we alternated between Amy’s diary and Nick’s account of each day? Were you able to hold onto what was likely fictitious once you learned that Amy had fabricated her diary?
How does each set of parents influence the expectations going into the marriage? Nick says his good stuff he got from his mom. But he feels his “father’s rage rise up in me in the ugliest way”. Did hearing about Amy’s and Nick’s upbringings affect your feelings toward either?
When Amy says to the reader “I hope you liked Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her. She’s so easy to like.” How did that make you feel? Are the readers’ emotions becoming part of the storyline at this point?
Nick parrots back to his lawyer Tanner, that he needs to be “One hundred percent canned yet totally genuine” just like Amy. Only the fake characters are likable. Did you find that true in the novel? At what point was each character most likable?
Fact and Fiction, Reality and Not
In Nick Dunne: Two Days Gone, Boney says to Nick, “People want to believe they know other people. Parents want to believe they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their husbands.” Isn’t that what readers want as well? Don’t we want to believe we know the characters we are reading about better than they know one another? How was this borne out in the novel? How was this need completely turned on its head?
In Nick Dunne: One Day Gone, Nick laments that “The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore.” To what extent is that what occurs in this book? How was the fiction of the novel making the image crisper? How was the author manipulating the readers’ emotions? Did you feel manipulated?
And in the same chapter, “It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.” Isn’t this exactly what the author is doing?
What Did You Believe and When
As you read Amy’s diary which rang truer? Her view of Amy and Nick’s relationship or his? Does your allegiance or lack of allegiance to Amy’s diary entries affect how you view Amy later in the book?
Here are some of Amy’s quotes from her diary:
“I have never been a nag. I have always been rather proud of my un-nagginess. So it pisses me off, that Nick is forcing me to nag”
“He doesn’t talk to me, he behaves as if the act of talking physically pains him and I am a vicious woman to ask it of him.”
“I was the bitter voice that needed to be squelched”
Amy even pretends to talk responsibility in her diary for the downfall of her marriage, “I knew what I was doing. I was punching every button on him. I was watching him coil tighter and tighter.” Did her humility and apparent acceptance of blame draw you in? Were you skeptical of the diary yet?
What actions or words changed your allegiance as you continued through the novel? How did you view the author as you continued?
In Nick Dunne: One Day Gone, Nick comments on Amy’s headshot, “Amy’s pictures gave a sense of her actually watching you.“ At any point did you as a reader suspect Amy was actually watching the whole event unfold?
In Amy Elliott Dunne: The Day of, when Amy starts narrating in the present and tells the reader “Don’t fret, we’ll sort this out: the true and the not true and the might as well be true.” What did you believe at this point?
At some point most readers may recognize that the storyline is headed nowhere but down. Where did you first suspect this was the case? Where did you grasp at hope that perhaps there could be vindication or at least comeuppance for the characters? Perhaps when Marybeth tells Nick there’s something missing inside him to act the way he’s been acting? Sooner? Later when Amy is down to her last quarter and dime? What triggers led you to view the direction of the novel to be downward? Did you want it to spiral down? Did you hold out for hope? Eight Days Gone
Story Ending
How did you react to the ending? What aspects of the novel kept you turning the pages? What irritated you about the book? Would you consider this an addictive thriller? How does it stack up with other thrillers you have read?
Other Quotes
“But there’s no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.”
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