Arty Calls

Gone and Forgotten

There are two sides to every story and one is good and one is bad. I was looking forward to this book because I read a reasonably average novel called Good Girl and the press seemed to equate it with this one just because of the title. I'd seen part of the film of Gone Girl and was looking forward to reading this. Now I find myself looking forward to finishing the film in order to compare the two but I'm not one of those people who complains that films aren't like the books or vice versa. They are always quite different but complimentary. Sometimes in a good way and sometimes not so good - just different. 

Strangely though I did find the two books more similar than the book to the film. That is because what frustrated me about Good Girl was the two dimensionality of just having two characters. In a film that seems less obviously a problem as your attention span and the story are short enough for it not to matter. In Gone Girl I really wanted the parents and friends to be more fully rounded. I wanted to find out what happened to the first girlfriend. I wanted to know more about the police investigators and the lawyer. The curiosity to read on is purely plot driven rather than character driven once you've worked out the basic premise and your empathy for the main protagonists is exhausted. Nonetheless you have to respect Flynn for avoiding a straightforward good versus bad approach to her characters and letting them speak fully through the narrative.