Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

This was one mind-fuck of a book. I have no other term to describe it better.

On a side note, it feels good to have picked up, at long last, a book that shouldn’t take more than two days of reading time (which sounds like a lot to ask for when compared to the last one I unfortunately picked: King’s Cell which is-I am restraining myself here- excruciatingly longwinded and purposeless).

Been a while since I read this light. Phew!

But that’s not exactly a merit in itself, is it? I mean, why do you reckon I don’t normally go for light reads? Because more often than not, they are written by light headed writers whose capacity for depth and detailing is as rich as the average Bombay street-urchin.

The exact merit that I would want to talk about here- apart from the fact that this is one mind-fuck of a book- is this:

To the authoress’ credit, I can’t seem to think of any aspect, literary and otherwise, that has been sacrificed by her to present her book as fast paced.

The character depth and scene buildup is almost exquisite. The detailing is perfectly generous without making the prose lose its purpose at any place or become flowery (believe you me, ‘flowery’ is definitely not a word I would use to describe anything even remotely related to Gone Girl) and the amount and the standard of wit in the writing was stand-out enough to question my belief that nobody can beat Irish authors in black humour.  

And, this is a four hundred and fifty paged, no double spacing, no generous margins and regular font book we’re discussing here. That’s a lot of space for a lot of things to get out of hand and turn the whole manuscript jarringly messy.

So, I for one simply cannot imagine the kind of intelligence and brutal perception of people and situations that a person would require to come up with shit this fucked up.

And that’s not all!

What I cannot even BEGIN to imagine-forget simply imagine- is the kind of literary talent it would take to suppress the urge to go full crazy while coming up with shit this fucked up and continue to write in such an abso-fuckin-lutely controlled manner till the very end!

Phew, I’m just blown away. Crazy stuff!

Immersive storyline, taut writing style, nerve-racking plot development, vicious twists that leave you laughing out loud helplessly and characters who are such a horrifying mess, after a point you start to think of them as really perfect, or worse, perfectly real (in a twisted sort of way).

Marriage as an institution never looked this naked. Really.

Crap, I can’t review further without giving away precious plot points; that is if any of you are left who haven’t still seen the movie adaptation. (Well I didn’t, and I was rewarded thoroughly by getting to read without knowing what would happen next.)

Recommended for sure.

Flynn, you evil little genius you.

Do I even have a choice now of not ordering your other two books in the next ten minutes?

                       ****Slyly opens Amazon.in, debit card in hand***