Fragments from "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn

"When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of

it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of

the head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles

of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had

what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could

imagine the skull quite easily.

I’d know her head anywhere.

And what’s inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all

those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast,

frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull,

unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin

down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? The question

I’ve asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to

the person who could answer. I suppose these questions

stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are

you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?"

 

 

"‘Treasure hunt,’ I said.

My wife loved games, mostly mind games, but also actual games of

amusement, and for our anniversary she always set up an

elaborate treasure hunt, with each clue leading to the hiding place

of the next clue until I reached the end, and my present. It was

what her dad always did for her mom on their anniversary, and

don’t think I don’t see the gender roles here, that I don’t get the

hint. But I did not grow up in Amy’s household, I grew up in mine,

and the last present I remember my dad giving my mom was an

iron, set on the kitchen counter, no wrapping paper."

 

 

 

"I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with

devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I

positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a

strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship

of conversations – bulkily, unnaturally – just so I can say his

name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have

been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don’t

care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I’ve gotten so retro,

at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shuffling out

the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way

to the beauty parlor. Nothing bothers me. Everything seems like it

will turn out fine, every bother transformed into an amusing story

to be told over dinner. So I killed a hobo today, honey … hahahaha!

Ah, we have fun!"

 

"It is our one-year anniversary and I am fat with love, even though

people kept telling and telling us the first year was going to be so

hard, as if we were naive children marching off to war. It wasn’t

hard. We are meant to be married. It is our one-year anniversary,

and Nick is leaving work at lunchtime; my treasure hunt awaits

him. The clues are all about us, about the past year together:

Whenever my sweet hubby gets a cold

It is this dish that will soon be sold."

 

photo source:http://www.cineticstudios.com/blog/2014/10/finding-gone-girl-a-technical-breakdown.html