Gone Girl

A twisted psychological thriller that exposes the dark underbelly of marriage and media manipulation in contemporary America.

On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne reports that his wife Amy has disappeared from their home in Missouri. As the media descends and the police begin their investigation, it becomes clear that Nick's behavior doesn't match that of a grieving husband. His lies and contradictions make him the prime suspect in Amy's disappearance, especially as evidence mounts that their marriage was far from the perfect union it appeared to be.

But Flynn's masterstroke is revealing Amy's perspective through her diary entries, which tell a very different story. Amy Dunne is not the perfect victim she initially appears to be. She's calculating, manipulative, and frighteningly intelligent—a woman who has carefully constructed not only her public image but her entire identity around what she thinks others want her to be.

The novel operates as both a gripping page-turner and a savage satire of contemporary American culture. Flynn skewers everything from cable news coverage of missing women to the economic anxieties of the professional class to the performative nature of modern marriage. Nick and Amy's relationship becomes a metaphor for the ways people create false selves to meet societal expectations, and how those false selves can eventually consume the real person underneath.

Flynn's prose is sharp and darkly funny, perfectly capturing the voices of two deeply unreliable narrators. Neither Nick nor Amy is entirely sympathetic, but both are undeniably compelling in their awfulness. Gone Girl became a cultural phenomenon, spawning countless imitators and establishing Flynn as a master of the psychological thriller.