Why you never really know the person you married: Jan Moir on Gone Girl, the best selling book that explores a fear that haunts many couples

By Jan Moir

PUBLISHED: 16:43 EST, 10 April 2013 | UPDATED: 16:43 EST, 10 April 2013

On two consecutive nights when reading Gone Girl, I had to get up and carry on reading the darned thing until dawn. Other fans talk of missing bus stops, of binge-reading it in one sitting, of being unable to concentrate on anything until reaching the last page and the terrible conclusion.

Which of course I am not going to give away here. Gone Girl does that to a girl. 

The unputdownable thriller, written by American author Gillian Flynn, has captivated millions of British readers since it was published last year. The novel tells the story of Nick and Amy Dunne, a pair of New York hipsters who relocate to his Midwest hometown against the backdrop of the economic slump.

Sinister: Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl raises some frightening questions about the dark side of marriage

It also, with needle-sharp precision, tells the story of Nick and Amy’s marriage, cracking under financial and emotional strain. As Flynn expertly peels back the psychological layers, we are confronted with painful realities about relationships and marriage that affect everyone, not just the nightmarish Dunnes.

How do you keep the spark alive when the honeymoon glow has faded? And more importantly, how well can you ever know the person you married, the person you lie next to every night, the person who is meant to be your soulmate? 

As Amy puts it: 'I am supposed to love Nick despite all his shortcomings. And Nick is supposed to love me despite my quirks. But clearly, neither of us does. It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times.'

Meanwhile, Nick is asking himself the question he has asked most often during their five-year marriage. 'What are you thinking, Amy?' he wonders. 'How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?'

Flynn’s female noir novel has become a literary sensation, with more than two million copies sold worldwide. Since the paperback was published here in January, another 500,000 copies have been sold. 

Despite its darkness, many women have found the book’s bleak portrayal of a marriage gone awry oddly comforting. 'Read Gone Girl — and stay single,' one reviewer advised.

Popular: Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl Gone is expected to prove as popular as E. L James' 50 Shades of Grey

Meanwhile, married readers have been reassured that no matter how difficult their own relationship might be, it is an improvement on the toxic marriage of the Dunnes; a union marinated in rage, anger, lethal spite — and worse.

Celebrity fans include the Hollywood actress Reese Witherspoon, who bought the Gone Girl film rights for £1 million. Sources say the star of Legally Blonde and Walk The Line will not actually appear in the film, but will have a producer credit.

With more than three months at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, Gone Girl — currently number three on Amazon UK’s bestsellers list, just behind Paul Hollywood’s latest baking book and a diet manual — is likely to surpass the success of E. L. James’s exhausting Fifty Shades Of Grey, the most-read novel of 2012.

Yet that is where the similarities between the two books end. Whereas Fifty Shades was an ungainly fantasy starring a wafer-thin character who seemed to be little more than a bondage Bridget Jones, Gone Girl is a polished, intelligent and expertly plotted thriller with characters so real you think you know them. 

Flynn is a former TV and film critic who lost her job on Entertainment Weekly in 2009, so turned her hand to writing novels full time. 

Despite the desolation of the Dunnes’ situation, Flynn herself is happily married to Chicago lawyer Brett Nolan, to whom she pays gushing tribute in the book’s acknowledgments. ('You’re it, baby. Thanks for marrying me.') 

The couple have a three-year-old son called Flynn — they thought it was a nice way to keep her maiden name in the family. In a recent interview, the 42-year-old author said she was keen to tackle marriage as a subject because of its endless dramatic potential.

Although Sarah Jessica Parker has been snapped with a copy, Reese Witherspoon is expected to play Amy

'At its best it can be the best thing in the world for a person — and at its worst can really undo a person,' she said. 'In its way, marriage is sort of like a long con, because you put on display your very best self during courtship, yet at the same time the person you marry is supposed to love you warts and all. But your spouse never sees those warts really until you get deeper into the marriage and let yourself unwind a bit.'

Alongside the mounting tension in the book, Flynn also makes some sharp observations about relationships; about the roles men and women play when they are part of a couple and the elusiveness of being happy ever after. 

'Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit,' is how Amy puts it.
Gone Girl opens on a bright and sunny Missouri day — the morning of the Dunnes’ fifth wedding anniversary. Amy is making crepes for breakfast when her husband walks into the kitchen. 'Well, hello, handsome,' she says to him. 

'Bile and dread inched up my throat,' Nick recalls, leaving the readers in no doubt that whatever kind of marriage this might be, it is not a happy one. He leaves their home and goes to work in the bar he and his twin sister have bought — with Amy’s money. 

Some time afterwards, a neighbour phones to say that the door to their riverside mansion is wide open. Inside there is blood and shattered glass — but no Amy. She has vanished. The girl is gone.

Throughout the book, Amy and Nick address the reader directly. They have both got their side of the story to tell and do so in real time and via diary entries. 

Readers must ride the switchback of their conflicting stories and work out who is telling the truth. They have been lying to each other, are they lying to us, too?

In a way, the marriage is a third character in the book; it forms the core of the rotten apple.
They were playing games from the start. Nick and Amy met at a party in Brooklyn and immediately clicked.

Lead role: The twice married Reese Witherspoon is tipped to play the part of Amy in the film adaptation

To impress her new boyfriend, Amy pretends to be the 'cool girl' — a role familiar to young women everywhere. A cool girl plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves sex, eats junk food while 'somehow maintaining a size 2'.

Amy also appears to despise the men who are solicitous of their wives, calling them 'dancing monkeys' who perform pointless tasks and execute 'myriad sacrifices' for their demanding wives. The novel exposes the sly cruelties that can daily blight long-term relationships; the tiny triumphs seized, the moral high ground claimed, the emotional power plays that can calcify and corrode love.

Although it failed to win any serious literary prizes in America, Gone Girl has been long-listed here for the 2013 Women’s Prize For Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize). At the moment, Flynn looks like the only contender who might just prevent Hilary Mantel — who has already won two major awards (Booker and Costa) for Bring Up The Bodies — from completing a literary hat-trick.

Gone Girl is exactly the kind of book that should be showered with awards — but probably won’t be. Literary judges are notoriously sniffy about anything in the thriller genre. Yet Gone Girl is so much more than a white-knuckle ride on the marital mess express.

There is something haunting in the spectacle of a husband and wife who come to understand that they don’t really know each other. It is this unknowingness of others that rolls through Gone Girl like a sea fog. It laps at every chapter, it sneaks under every occurrence. 

We all understand that behind closed doors, no one knows what goes on in other people’s relationships, but how can we accurately map the landscape of our own?

On the battlefield of the lovelorn, couples set out their compromises and take their revenge as cannonballs tear holes in their hearts. Gone Girl proves one thing for sure: marriage can be a real killer.