It’s hard to overstate what a phenomenon Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was upon its 2012 release. An instant bestseller, the novel received rave reviews from critics despite being hard to summarize: The story of Nick, a man suspected of killing his missing wife, Amy, is notoriously twisty, surprising readers who managed to dodge spoilers.
At the heart of its success, perhaps, was Amy, an antihero who both enchanted and repelled readers. For too long, women had been consigned to roles as victims in thrillers—but not Amy. Flynn later told the Hollywood Reporter that conventional wisdom at the time was that readers didn’t want books with unlikeable women characters. Her book, she said, “absolutely blew the doors off that old-fashioned, completely antiquated theory.”
Gone Girl inspired writers who’d been itching to write about flawed women. It also struck a nerve with readers who identified with Amy’s “Cool Girl” monologue: “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.’”
David Fincher’s film adaptation with Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck wowed moviegoers in 2014, but by then the novel had already earned an enduring place in American literature. Some novels change literary culture; some change the culture at large. Gone Girl did both.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
