Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

11 annotations • data

First annotation on Dec 19th, 2022. Last on Nov 19th, 2025.

Chapter 2

I'm too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I'm obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I've basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I'm dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me.
I can feel an Indian crying. (Nick would hate that joke. Derivative! And then he'd add, "although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative."

Chapter 0

That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she's hosting the world's biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they're fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men—friends, coworkers, strangers—giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn't really love chili dogs that much—no one loves chili dogs that much!
And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They're not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they're pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you're not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn't want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version—maybe he's a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he's a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn't ever complain. (How do you know you're not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: "I like strong women." If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because "I like strong women" is code for "I hate strong women.")

Chapter 7

Tommy called again for his Scotch. "Let me ask: Your marriage was good? Amy was happy?" I stayed silent. "You don't have to answer, but I'm going to guess no. Amy was not happy. For whatever reason. I'm not even going to ask. I can guess, but I'm not going to ask. But I know you must know this: Amy likes to play God when she's not happy. Old Testament God." "Meaning?" "She doles out punishment," Tommy said. "Hard." He laughed into the phone. "I mean, you should see me," he said. "I do not look like some alpha-male rapist. I look like a twerp. I am a twerp. My go-to karaoke song is 'Sister Christian,' for crying out loud. I weep during Godfather II. Every time." He coughed after a swallow. Seemed like a moment to loosen him up. "Fredo?" I asked. "Fredo, man, yeah. Poor Fredo." "Stepped over." Most men have sports as the lingua-franca of dudes. This was the film-geek equivalent to discussing some great play in a famous football game. We both knew the line, and the fact that we both knew it eliminated a good day's worth of are we copacetic small talk.

Chapter 5

The night before, sleepless and nervy, I'd gone online and watched Hugh Grant on Leno, 1995, apologizing to the nation for getting lewd with a hooker. Stuttering, stammering, squirming as if his skin were two sizes too small. But no excuses: "I think you know in life what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing, and I did a bad thing…and there you have it." Damn, the guy was good—he looked sheepish, nervous, so shaky you wanted to take his hand and say, Buddy, it's not that big a deal, don't beat yourself up.

Chapter 8

It really is true. It took this awful situation for us to realize it. Nick and I fit together. I am a little too much, and he is a little too little. I am a thornbush, bristling from the overattention of my parents, and he is a man of a million little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into them.

Chapter 6

"You are a man," I say. "You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that's what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam. But I made you into something. You were the best man you've ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you've ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like. Without me? You're just your dad." "Don't say that, Amy." He balls up his fists. "You think he wasn't hurt by a woman too, just like you?" I say it in my most patronizing voice, as if I'm talking to a puppy. "You think he didn't believe he deserved better than he got, just like you? You really think your mom was his first choice? Why do you think he hated you all so much?" He moves toward me. "Shut up, Amy." "Think, Nick, you know I'm right: Even if you found a nice, regular girl, you'd be thinking of me every day. Tell me you wouldn't." "I wouldn't." "How quickly did you forget little Able Andie once you thought I loved you again?" I say it in my poor-baby voice. I even stick out my lower lip. "One love note, sweetie? Did one love note do it? Two? Two notes with me swearing I loved you and I wanted you back, and I thought you were just great after all—was that it for you? You are WITTY, you are WARM, you are BRILLIANT. You're so pathetic. You think you can ever be a normal man again? You'll find a nice girl, and you'll still think of me, and you'll be so completely dissatisfied, trapped in your boring, normal life with your regular wife and your two average kids. You'll think of me and then you'll look at your wife, and you'll think: Dumb bitch."

Chapter 3

The question was: "Complete this sentence: Double, double, toil and…and then a series of words that might rhyme. I didn't need them. Good little scholar that I was, I blurted out, "toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble."

Chapter 4

Their wedding was a loose, casual affair with a store-bought cake and Boone's Farm in the backyard of a friend's house. My parents are unduly proud of the cheapness of the whole thing: the plain gold bands instead of diamonds, the 8-track tapes instead of a band, the inner-city apple wine instead of champagne. I'm sure if they were still poor now, they'd be less pleased with themselves. But they are wealthy, so they point to this moment—and the matching bands they never upgraded—to prove that they are still "of the people." I must admit, I have seen home movies of the wedding: brief flickering silent images (the kind advertisers now use on TV to lend a product instant nostalgia), and everyone did look giddy