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Reading Wednesday
Feb. 6th, 2013 07:53 pm• What are you currently reading?
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. 97 pages in. I'm reading it like a mystery, though it is packaged as literary fiction. A woman disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary. She always gives her husband sweet, sentimental treasure hunts on their anniversaries, which he always fails. Oddly, no one in the novel suggests that this might be a hunt staged by Amy with herself as the prize, even though Amy and Nick both interpret his failure to get her clues as his failure to get her, even though the signs of a struggle in the living room include
The author is also tossing out hints of Nick's guilt. He has a disturbingly detailed image of Amy crawling, bleeding, crying his name. He overreacts when his sister suggests that some guy hit Amy on the head. And he tells us that he's keeping secrets and telling lies.
Then there are Amy's parents, who seem to come from a different, more caricatured reality, and Amy's previous stalkers, and lots of unemployed drifters. I'm worried that the author is going to abandon most of these threads, like in the joke
It's the kind of thing literary authors of genre fiction do.
• What did you recently finish reading?
The Monster in the Box, by Ruth Rendell. I thought the mystery was obvious, but I'm still fond of Chief Inspector Wexford and his world.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
I should read The Night Circus, for the SF book group, or The Language of Flowers, for the other book group, but neither of them is calling me.
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. 97 pages in. I'm reading it like a mystery, though it is packaged as literary fiction. A woman disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary. She always gives her husband sweet, sentimental treasure hunts on their anniversaries, which he always fails. Oddly, no one in the novel suggests that this might be a hunt staged by Amy with herself as the prize, even though Amy and Nick both interpret his failure to get her clues as his failure to get her, even though the signs of a struggle in the living room include
Amy's favorite vase was lying on the floor, intact, bumped up against the wall. It was a wedding present, a Japanese masterwork that Amy put away each week when our housecleaner came because she was sure it would get smashedand no blood.
The author is also tossing out hints of Nick's guilt. He has a disturbingly detailed image of Amy crawling, bleeding, crying his name. He overreacts when his sister suggests that some guy hit Amy on the head. And he tells us that he's keeping secrets and telling lies.
Then there are Amy's parents, who seem to come from a different, more caricatured reality, and Amy's previous stalkers, and lots of unemployed drifters. I'm worried that the author is going to abandon most of these threads, like in the joke
What has four legs, two horns, and quacks like a duck?
I don't know, what?
A cow!
But a cow doesn't quack like a duck.
I just put that in to confuse you.
It's the kind of thing literary authors of genre fiction do.
• What did you recently finish reading?
The Monster in the Box, by Ruth Rendell. I thought the mystery was obvious, but I'm still fond of Chief Inspector Wexford and his world.
• What do you think you’ll read next?
I should read The Night Circus, for the SF book group, or The Language of Flowers, for the other book group, but neither of them is calling me.