"Gone Girl"

Gillian Flynn's much touted thriller "Gone Girl" left me cold. The quirky narrative style of taking the story ahead through a husband and a wife's point of view is interesting but the overall story is disappointing. On their fifth anniversary of wedding, Nick Dunne's wife Amy disappears and people start suspecting that Nick must have done away with his wife. All the clues also point at him being the guilty one. But it turns out that Amy is playing a dangerous game with one and all. The novel didn't grip my attention till the end as the story after Amy's return limps. The media melee as shown in the story is unconvincing to say the least. Amy's character is one-dimensionally evil hence uninteresting while Nick's false leads in the beginning commands attention but falls flat later on. Other minor characters are also just ok. I must admit that the language is sharp and the theme of sweet idealism versus bitter realism in a conjugal context is laudable. Alas, the story that builds around the theme could have been much better.