gone girl

I just finished reading the most intense thriller/mystery/crime book called Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It's about Amy and Nick Dunne and Amy goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary. The entire story is about the search for Amy told through Nick's point of view and Amy's diary entries. I brought this book camping and could have easily finished it in a day, but forced myself to take my time for fear I would have nothing to do while everyone else chopped wood and threw rocks. Gillian Flynn is a master storyteller and I couldn't put the book down. This book is for fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Dexter, serial killers and other psycho crime stories. Actually, I was very much reminded of Dragon Tat because I remember being so enthralled by Stieg Larsson's writing and not being able to stop reading it, as well as my overall sense of shock and wonder at the gruesomeness of it. This book is twisted and the ending left me in awe. Additionally, it is a great commentary on the selfishness, narcissism and overall phoniness of our generation. I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but this really has been one of my favorite books I've read this summer and definitely of the year.  I can't wait for this to become a movie because it will probably still make me pee my pants even though I know the ending. Here is a long, but exceptionally good excerpt: 

It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blase: Seeeen it. I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand 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. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.