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"Some of the most inspiring women on our radar? Authors. They&amp;#x27;re writing about changing the world, rethinking identity, transporting us to different countries, and sweeping us up into a fictional world where we barely have a second to breathe (read on to see what we mean!) That&amp;#x27;s why we&amp;#x27;re talking about Gillian Flynn&amp;amp;#8217;s Gone Girl, the sneaky thriller that is killing it on the New York Times&amp;amp;#8217;s best-seller list. Does it live up to the hype? Is it worth the effort? Read on to find out! (Spoilers abound, girls!)Meet the book clubbers: Senior Editors Emma Rosenblum and Marina Khidekel, and Deputy Editor Lauren Iannotti LAUREN: So we&amp;amp;#8217;re here to talk about Gillian Flynn&amp;amp;#8217;s Gone Girl, one of summer&amp;amp;#8217;s Big Hot books, about a wife who goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, and the husband who doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t seem guilty, but who isn&amp;amp;#8217;t acting innocent either. The narration switches between the wife&amp;amp;#8217;s journals leading up to the day she disappears and the husband&amp;amp;#8217;s real time reaction to the investigation. So, what did you guys think? EMMA: Well, I had read both of her other books before this. So I knew she was good. And this was her best book yet. LAUREN: So, not knowing about the hype and the surprise unreliable narrator thing, what did you think? Were you surprised? MARINA: I had my theories that I was rattling off to Emma every day as I was reading. EMMA: But they were all wrong. MARINA: One was kind of in the right direction, though. I never liked Amy from her diary entries. I think you were supposed to, but I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t. I thought Nick was being cruel and acting like a psychopath. But I knew something was up with Amy, too. And then&amp;amp;#8212;spoiler alert&amp;amp;#8212;she&amp;amp;#8217;s a psychopath! She created a fake diary, with a fake version of herself and fake events, so she could frame her husband for murdering her. So they&amp;amp;#8217;re both kind of psychopaths&amp;amp;#8212;yay! I thought Flynn did a really good job of writing two unlikeable characters that you actually care what happens to. EMMA: If you think about it, it&amp;amp;#8217;s an ingenious construction that she did where Amy, as a character, is writing these fake diary entries. She&amp;amp;#8217;s a character writing another character. It&amp;amp;#8217;s brilliant. I think that&amp;amp;#8217;s why it&amp;amp;#8217;s so shocking because you&amp;amp;#8217;re invested in this person, and then you find out it after the fact that it was made up, that person never existed. And you have to completely reconceive what you think. LAUREN: I love an unreliable narrator. It was fun having to think back and reevaluate. I almost want to read it again for that purpose. EMMA: Everyone says that you should read it again. LAUREN: The best trick Flynn pulled was making you really identify with Amy before revealing she&amp;amp;#8217;s a crazy person. Having been married and now divorced, I thought she hit on some really resonant things with regards to young marriage or the early days of a relationship. A lot of us act like the perfect partner, and we don&amp;amp;#8217;t say what we want in return, but we get pissed when we don&amp;amp;#8217;t get it. So I was like, Yes, I get that! And then it turns out she&amp;amp;#8217;s a psycho and I thought, Am I a psychopath? Should I actually feel bad for my ex?! LAUREN: A lot of us try to be the best versions of ourselves in the beginning, because we want to rope this person in, and to prove to ourselves that this is all going to be great. EMMA: That&amp;amp;#8217;s why it&amp;amp;#8217;s such a good book because it&amp;amp;#8217;s a comedy of manners basically, parodying the modern marriage and then taking it to the psychopathic heights. It could just be a portrait of a broken marriage, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s much darker than that. Flynn&amp;amp;#8217;s very smart and has social observations about relationships and about couples in the city and about working in media. But then, the next level is that it is actually a real thriller. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why I thought it was good. Especially in the first half when you&amp;amp;#8217;re learning about their marriage, at least from his point of view, there&amp;amp;#8217;s all those little things where you&amp;amp;#8217;re like, &amp;amp;#8220;Oh, yeah, we make fun of the people who...&amp;amp;#8221; MARINA: The dancing monkeys&amp;amp;#8212;the husbands who do whatever their wives ask them to. LAUREN: The dancing monkeys! Don&amp;amp;#8217;t we all pick apart other couples? And it&amp;amp;#8217;s always some latent jealousy thing. MARINA: I think the character Amy is more like the fake diary version of herself than she cares to admit. I think she really did feel those things at that time, and then going back from a darker place she wrote it with a sort of contempt for that person who felt all that. EMMA: Which is why she tries at the end to try to recreate that. She&amp;amp;#8217;s like, I have to be with him because we were at our best selves with each other. I think her tone was put on, but I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think the feelings that she was having and the observations she was having were untrue. MARINA: People withhold stuff from each other. And it festers. I love the scene where Nick got a phone call from his sister, saying that his mom had cancer. Amy had just made eggs, and she was just about to give them to him. He took the call, so she thought, Should I put the eggs down? Are you going to be on the phone long? Are they going to get cold? What should I do with the eggs? She says she would have just waved to him like it&amp;amp;#8217;s OK, I don&amp;amp;#8217;t need the eggs now. But he didn&amp;amp;#8217;t even acknowledge her. So she was stuck with these eggs, and she stewed about it. It&amp;amp;#8217;s such a small thing, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s the little grudges you hold against your significant other. You could have just as easily told me what to do with these eggs, but you didn&amp;amp;#8217;t and that makes you a jerk. But she didn&amp;amp;#8217;t say anything, because she was still trying to be the cool girl. EMMA: This is like, what happens when you don&amp;amp;#8217;t know everything about your partner. What if you don&amp;amp;#8217;t know that your husband is actually way less ambitious than you think he is? That&amp;amp;#8217;s a very everyday problem. But what if you don&amp;amp;#8217;t know that your wife is capable of murder? That&amp;amp;#8217;s when she takes it to the psychopathic, crazy, murdering heights. LAUREN: What did you guys think of the other characters? EMMA: Nick&amp;amp;#8217;s sister was weird to me. You start to get a sense of her, and then she just kind of fades. LAUREN: I felt that way about a lot of the secondary characters. But I guess it&amp;amp;#8217;s a thriller. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not Dickens. EMMA: The parents were real people to me, weirdly. LAUREN: I wanted something terrible to happen to them. Smug psychotherapists who exploited their own daughter for money, writing children&amp;amp;#8217;s books about her, creating an alter-ego she couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t live up to. I guess another problem I had at the end of the book&amp;amp;#8212;I wanted them to know what they&amp;amp;#8217;d wrought. I like justice to be served. I guess that&amp;amp;#8217;s a clich&amp;amp;#233;. MARINA: I think we all do to an extent. EMMA: Yeah, I mean you obviously want him to kill her. MARINA: Or just you want her to go to jail forever. You want something. EMMA: I thought it was the weakest part of the book. MARINA: I liked it overall but I agree. LAUREN: I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t believe Nick would stay with his murdering wife. There were like two brief paragraphs about his rationale for staying, and I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t believe a word of it. And all the side characters just kind of swallowed it. EMMA: Nick&amp;amp;#8217;s sister was weird to me. You start to get a sense of her, and then she just kind of fades. LAUREN: I felt that way about a lot of the secondary characters. But I guess it&amp;amp;#8217;s a thriller. It&amp;amp;#8217;s not Dickens. EMMA: The parents were real people to me, weirdly. LAUREN: I wanted something terrible to happen to them. Smug psychotherapists who exploited their own daughter for money, writing children&amp;amp;#8217;s books about her, creating an alter-ego she couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t live up to. I guess another problem I had at the end of the book&amp;amp;#8212;I wanted them to know what they&amp;amp;#8217;d wrought. I like justice to be served. I guess that&amp;amp;#8217;s a clich?\uFFFD, but. MARINA: I think we all do to an extent, and that&amp;amp;#8217;s why she says you&amp;amp;#8217;re not going to get it here. But I just didn&amp;amp;#8217;t think it was done in the most effective way. EMMA:Yeah, I mean you obviously want him to kill her. MARINA: Or just you want her to go to jail forever. You want something. So, have you read Gone Girl? What did YOU think? Do you agree with our eds, or do you have a totally different take on the book? P.S. The Anti-Beach Reads List: 6 Books to Dig Into This Summer"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2012/07/glamourcoms-three-minute-book>