Gone Girl

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

Narrated by Julia Whelan, Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged — 19 hours, 57 minutes

Gone Girl

Gone Girl

by Gillian Flynn

Narrated by Julia Whelan, Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged — 19 hours, 57 minutes

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The phenomenon that waltzed right into Hollywood, it's the dark and twisted story of a married couple marred by deceipt and duplicitousness. As pressure mounts and you triple-question what's really going on, the ending will leave you short of breath. It's just that good.

Marriage can be a real killer.

One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work "draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction." Gone Girl's toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.

Under mounting pressure from the police and the media-as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents-the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter-but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.


Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2012 - AudioFile

Narrator Kirby Heyborne begins this suspense novel when Nick comes home on his fifth anniversary to an empty house that shows signs of a struggle but no sign of his beautiful and clever wife, Amy. Heyborne creates a persona of passive detachment that begins to show signs of wear as the police investigation increasingly focuses on him. Weaving around Nick’s story, Julia Whelan dishes up Amy’s diaries, beginning when Amy and Nick first met, with a tone of the doting and loving wife who lives to please. Soon it’s clear that neither Amy nor Nick is to be taken at face value. The nuances heard in both Whelan’s and Heyborne’s narrations heighten the suspense and support the intricacies of the plot. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

The Washington Post - Yvonne Zipp

Fans of unreliable narrators, rejoice: You can't believe anything either spouse tells you in Flynn's acid-inked pages.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Gone Girl is Ms. Flynn's dazzling breakthrough. It is wily, mercurial, subtly layered and populated by characters so well imagined that they're hard to part with—even if, as in Amy's case, they are already departed. And if you have any doubts about whether Ms. Flynn measures up to Patricia Highsmith's level of discreet malice, go back and look at the small details. Whatever you raced past on a first reading will look completely different the second time around.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

What makes Flynn so fearless a writer is the way she strips her characters of their pretenses and shows no mercy while they squirm…Flynn dares the reader to figure out which instances of marital discord might flare into a homicidal rage.

Publishers Weekly - Audio

Flynn’s bestselling novel is a dark and cynical treatise on how malignant a marriage can become when the wrong people say “I do.” The book begins with Nick Dunne’s first-person account of wife Amy’s disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary and his subsequent encounters with the local North Carthage, Miss., homicide detectives who suspect him of murder. Interspersed throughout the book are Amy’s diary entries, which chart her possibly unreliable version of her and Nick’s meeting, marriage, and eventual growing apart. This literary setup is perfect for the dueling narration provided by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne. The latter has a soft, youthful delivery that registers a vague sincerity that could also be interpreted as sarcasm—just the sort of voice one might expect from an intelligent, oddly disaffected, potential wife killer. Whelan’s version of Amy is filled with entitlement, egotism, and the edgy anger of a genuine or imagined victim. The combined narration of Whelan and Heyborne infuse Flynn’s bestseller with an energy that audio fans will find even more satisfying. A Crown hardcover. (July)

From the Publisher

Absorbing . . . In masterly fashion, Flynn depicts the unraveling of a marriage—and of a recession-hit Midwest—by interweaving the wife’s diary entries with the husband’s first-person account.”The New Yorker

“Ms. Flynn writes dark suspense novels that anatomize violence without splashing barrels of blood around the pages . . . Ms. Flynn has much more up her sleeve than a simple missing-person case. As Nick and Amy alternately tell their stories, marriage has never looked so menacing, narrators so unreliable.”The Wall Street Journal

“The story unfolds in precise and riveting prose . . . even while you know you’re being manipulated, searching for the missing pieces is half the thrill of this wickedly absorbing tale.”O: The Oprah Magazine

“Ice-pick-sharp . . . spectacularly sneaky . . . impressively cagey . . . Gone Girl is Ms. Flynn’s dazzling breakthrough. It is wily, mercurial, subtly layered and populated by characters so well imagined that they’re hard to part with.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“An ingenious and viperish thriller . . . Even as Gone Girl grows truly twisted and wild, it says smart things about how tenuous power relations are between men and women, and how often couples are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. As if that weren’t enough, Flynn has created a genuinely creepy villain you don't see coming. People love to talk about the banality of evil. You’re about to meet a maniac you could fall in love with.” Jeff Giles, Entertainment Weekly
 
“An irresistible summer thriller with a twisting plot worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. Burrowing deep into the murkiest corners of the human psyche, this delectable summer read will give you the creeps and keep you on edge until the last page.”—People (four stars)

“It’s simply fantastic: terrifying, darkly funny and at times moving. . . . [Gone Girl is] her most intricately twisted and deliciously sinister story, dangerous for any reader who prefers to savor a novel as opposed to consuming it whole in one sitting.”—Michelle Weiner, Associated Press
 
“Gillian Flynn’s third novel is both breakneck-paced thriller and masterful dissection of marital breakdown. . . . Wickedly plotted and surprisingly thoughtful, this is a terrifically good read.”The Boston Globe
 
Gone Girl is that rare thing: a book that thrills and delights while holding up a mirror to how we live. . . . Through her two ultimately unreliable narrators, Flynn masterfully weaves the slow trickle of critical details with 90-degree plot turns. . . . Timely, poignant and emotionally rich, Gone Girl will peel away your comfort levels even as you root for its protagonists—despite your best intuition.” San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Gillian Flynn's barbed and brilliant Gone Girl has two deceitful, disturbing, irresistible narrators and a plot that twists so many times you'll be dizzy.”Minneapolis Star-Tribune
 
“Flynn is a master manipulator, deftly fielding multiple unreliable narrators, sardonic humor, and social satire in a story of a marriage gone wrong that makes black comedies like The War of the Roses and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf look like scenes from a honeymoon. . . . It is, in a word, amazing.”—Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor

Gone Girl [is] a thriller with an insane twist and an insidiously realistic take on marriage.”New York

“Brilliantly constructed and consistently absorbing . . . The novel, which twists itself into new shapes, works as a page-turning thriller, but it’s also a study of marriage at its most destructive.”The Columbus Dispatch

Library Journal - Audio

Nick Dunne knows his too-perfect wife, Amy, is planning something special for him to mark their fifth wedding anniversary. Since losing their New York City jobs and moving back to his small Missouri hometown, their relationship has hit a rough patch. But when Nick arrives for the celebration, there are signs of a struggle in several rooms, and Amy is gone. Their marriage has been strained, but he wouldn’t kill her…would he? The dual perspectives of Nick and Amy, presented here by narrators Kirby Heyborne and Julia Whelan, reveal both sides of the relationship.

(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Library Journal

Flynn’s twisty, trenchant crime novel about a woman’s disappearance, the mounting evidence against her husband, and the details of their disintegrating marriage has gotten plenty of attention and more than stands up to the hype. It’s a marvel of subverted genre conventions, brilliant writing, subtle characterization, and genuine surprises. The police, the public, and television crime shows all focus on Nick Dunne in the wake of his wife’s disappearance. He’s acting strangely and might be hiding something, but did he kill her? (LJ 3/1/12)—Stephanie Klose

(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

JUNE 2012 - AudioFile

Narrator Kirby Heyborne begins this suspense novel when Nick comes home on his fifth anniversary to an empty house that shows signs of a struggle but no sign of his beautiful and clever wife, Amy. Heyborne creates a persona of passive detachment that begins to show signs of wear as the police investigation increasingly focuses on him. Weaving around Nick’s story, Julia Whelan dishes up Amy’s diaries, beginning when Amy and Nick first met, with a tone of the doting and loving wife who lives to please. Soon it’s clear that neither Amy nor Nick is to be taken at face value. The nuances heard in both Whelan’s and Heyborne’s narrations heighten the suspense and support the intricacies of the plot. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169060133
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 06/05/2012
Edition description: Unabridged
Sales rank: 426,854

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Gone Girl"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Gillian Flynn.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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