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Summary
Part One: Boy Loses Girl
Nick Dunne, The Day Of
The novel begins with a dreamlike memory, as Nick gazes at his wife Amy’s beautiful blonde head. He’s thinking about how hard it is to really know what one’s spouse is feeling. He wakes up abruptly at 6:00 AM., which is unusual for him since moving back to Carthage, Missouri, from New York City. When Amy and Nick lost their jobs in the recession of 2008, they moved to Missouri to care for Maureen, Nick’s terminally ill mother. Amy, a city girl at heart, was miserable at the idea, but Nick was secretly relieved to have a reason to leave New York. From his room, Nick hears Amy cooking in the kitchen. It’s their fifth wedding anniversary. He goes downstairs and she greets him, but he feels only revulsion and shame when he sees her. He leaves abruptly to go and open The Bar, a bar he co-owns with his sister Margo (whom Nick calls “Go”) and for which Amy paid $80,000 from her trust fund.
Amy Elliott, Diary Entry, January 8th, 2005
The novel jumps back in time to 2005, switching to Amy’s perspective. Amy’s a professional writer of personality quizzes for magazines. She’s also been written about a great deal, as her parents were novelists and her childhood was the inspiration for the popular Amazing Amy book series. She diaries about meeting a new love interest at a party in Brooklyn: Nick Dunne. He’s tall and handsome and very cocky. They leave the party together, walking past a bakery getting a sugar delivery. He brushes airborne sugar dust from her mouth before he kisses her. She is smitten.
Nick Dunne, The Day Of
Nick immediately feels better when he sees Go at The Bar. She’s his twin sister, and he feels he can relax fully when he’s around her. Go pours him a beer. Nick tells her that it's his fifth anniversary with Amy, and that he knows she’ll have made him a treasure hunt, which he secretly always hates. Nick thinks about people teasing him and his sister about incest. Go and Amy hate each other, which makes Nick’s relationship with Amy even more difficult. Nick gets a phone call telling him to head home. He does, only to find the door hanging open and the living room wrecked. Amy is missing.
Amy Elliott, Diary Entry, September 18th, 2005
Back in 2005, Amy hasn’t seen Nick for eight months after their kiss. She’s disappointed but he apologizes, and they quickly fall in love. As she describes their early relationship, Amy also thinks about how she felt a lot of pressure to live up to her literary alter ego, “Amazing Amy,” and how she has never felt good enough for her parents. She was worried about ending up alone, but after reconnecting with Nick, Amy feels she’s finally starting her life in earnest.
Nick Dunne, The Day Of
Nick calls the police and waits for them anxiously, nervous about Amy’s disappearance. Two police officers arrive, and two detectives quickly follow. Detectives Rhonda Boney and Jim Gilpin question Nick about what might have happened to Amy. Nick tells them about Amy’s struggles in Missouri after leaving New York and her attempts to stay busy. He’s uncomfortable and scared. He lies to the detectives about what he did that day and about his relationship with Amy, thinking back to their marriage at her wealthy family’s Cape Cod home. .
Amy Elliott Dunne, Diary Entry, July 5th, 2008
Amy is thrilled to be married to Nick, even though she’s uncomfortable with the gender politics of her new wifely bliss. She details their fun, carefree life together in New York, giddily describing their adventures and their sex life. She plans an elaborate scavenger hunt for their one-year anniversary, dismissing the idea that everyone else seems to have that marriage is difficult.
Nick Dunne, The Night Of
Nick goes to the police station with Boney and Gilpin. He submits to a cheek swab and an interview, even though he knows they suspect him, and answers invasive questions about his life with Amy in New York and Missouri. He answers more questions, admitting he has no alibi. Nick realizes he’s lied to the detectives several times, and starts to get emotional and angry with them. He makes the call to Amy’s parents, and then returns to Go’s house, searching for some peace.
Analysis
Right from the beginning of the story, the protagonists of Gone Girl behave in strange and initially inexplicable ways. The first sentences of the book concern Nick gazing at Amy’s head and wondering what’s going on inside it. This is a moment of intense foreshadowing for the reader as they—like Nick—will spend most of the first half of the book trying to parse out what Amy is thinking and feeling. Nick is, of course, more interested in her thoughts than the actual flesh and bone underneath her hair, but the language of touch here indicates that he’s imagining those thoughts as tangible objects. He says that, like a child, he “pictures opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts.” To Nick, Amy’s mind is so powerful that her thoughts seem like they might take up real physical space. Nick's curiosity about Amy’s mindset is also more than just idle speculation. Because he’s working to keep her happy and to conceal the affair he’s having, trying to guess how much Amy knows and how she might react drives a lot of the novel’s tension.
Part of why Nick is so focused on understanding Amy is his wife’s highly contradictory character. She’s almost too perfect; since he’s known her, she has always been mysterious and “cool.” On the surface, she appears relaxed and charming, but as their marriage progresses her manipulative and sinister side slowly begins to come to light. She’s never done anything as deranged as the disappearing act she performs here, but Nick starts to think back to moments where he’s wondered about her motivations and morals. Nick's obsession with Amy's inner life also reflects his own insecurities and guilt. His infidelity and his emotional withdrawal make him question his own worth as a husband: he doesn’t want to feel revulsed by his wife, but he does. By trying to decipher Amy, he seeks to deflect some of the blame away from himself for their issues. He hopes that understanding her will somehow justify or explain his own failures.
The novel’s narrative structure alternates between Nick's and Amy's perspectives. Although Amy is “gone” at its beginning, her diary means that she is just as present as Nick is for the reader. This intensifies the sense that there are two personalities battling for dominance over telling their story, and speaks to the book’s motif of storytelling. This approach also keeps readers guessing about who to trust and what to believe, as both narrators speak in the first person and seem sincere. Lastly, these dueling perspectives mirror Nick's confusion and uncertainty about Amy. The shifting perspective the author uses points to the difficulty of truly knowing another person, especially someone as complex as Amy Elliot Dunne.
The beginning of the novel also focuses intently on establishing Nick’s relationship with the other very important woman in his life: his twin sister Go. This sibling bond is the exact opposite of the strained and often resentful relationship the reader already knows Nick shares with Amy. Here at the start of the novel, Nick and Go's relationship is affectionate and comparatively untroubled. They are very close and there’s a lot of warmth in their dialogue, especially in contrast to the frosty atmosphere between Nick and Amy. Unlike his complicated and often deceptive interactions with Amy, Nick's bond with Go is all about honesty and mutual support. They share a deep-seated connection that goes beyond being siblings. They are best friends, and Go is the only person who’s always willing to stand up to Nick. She’s Nick's confidante and anchor, offering a safe space where he can express his frustrations and fears without judgment.
The fact that in most marriages a wife would play this role is not lost on either Go or Amy: Amy has always been jealous of Nick’s relationship with his sister. Her straightforward and no-nonsense attitude also provides a counterbalance to Amy’s introspective, manipulative personality. The bar Go and Nick co-own is a physical symbol of this stability. Even though Amy paid for them to start The Bar, it becomes a refuge where Nick can escape the recriminations and painful silences that have come to define his relationship with her.
Despite their close relationship, Go is not blind to Nick's flaws. She acknowledges his shortcomings, including his tendency to be smilingly condescending and avoid confrontation. However, her love for him remains unconditional, and she often acts as his moral compass, urging him to face his problems head-on rather than running away from them. This dynamic is crucial as it shows the trust they share. It also sets the stage for Go's unwavering support throughout the unfolding crisis of Amy's disappearance. Nick's reliance on Go at the beginning of the novel also underscores how damaged his marriage has become. While he and Amy once shared a very intimate and equal connection, their relationship is now a shell of its former self.. In contrast, Nick’s relationship with Go remains authentic and untainted by pretense.
