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.

Good Girl Not Gone

Like any avid reader I tend to let random choices take me to unexpected places. In this case it is Grand Marais, Minnesota and a straightforward kidnap caper called The Good Girl by Mary Kubica. The press seem to equate this novel with Gone Girl which I saw part of the film of recently and am looking forward to reading as I missed the ending. It's thankfully part of a big pile on the bedside table. But this is not Gone Girl and doesn't pretend to be. The similarity is just for lazy journalists and marketers who haven't read either. Sure it's a psychological thriller and it involves a central female character. That's your similarity for you.

I found the style of The Good Girl both fascinating and irritating. The chapters are mostly 2 to 3 pages long. It clearly signposts which character you're reading and where it is on the timeline. There is a fair bit of repetition and making sure you know what's going on. It results in a story that reads like a TV script, which is not helped by the "even Jessica Fletcher could work it out" twist at the end. Nonetheless the shifting moral standpoint, the common humanity and the claustrophobic relationships all make this an efficiently compelling read and the threat of violence is refreshingly restrained rather than graphic and explicit.