01 May When Amy meets Nick
Not only does writer Gillian Flynn weave a masterfully suspenseful tale in her blockbuster, Gone Girl, she writes with an intoxicating edginess. Every character is witty in his or her own way, but none more than Nick and his perfect wife, Amazing Amy. 
I guess this is no surprise considering Flynn admittedly put pieces of herself into Nick. A writer for Entertainment Weekly, Ms. Flynn lost her job after a decade of what I imagine was distinguished service (how could it not be with her talent?). That would explain Nick’s on-going commentary about how he had a job for eleven years and then he didn’t. How he was “A writer who wrote about TV and movies and books. Back when people read things on paper…” before “All around the country, magazines began shuttering, succumbing to a sudden infection brought on by the busted economy.”
While Amy is ultimately very difficult to like (and it will be nearly impossible to write about her without giving plot points away), I did enjoy her honest if not slightly offensive take on the world around her. Her description of former f*cks with different kinds of men followed by her take on meeting her future husband for the first time was brilliant. There’s the “guy who wears his cockiness like an ironic t-shirt, who carries himself like a guy who likes women, a guy who would actually f*ck me properly. I would like to get f*cked properly!” And on it goes as she describes the Wall Streeters with money in their eyes, their ears, their mouths, the sensitive boys who are so self-aware everything feels like a joke, the Fitzgerald fellows who tend to be ineffectively porny in bed, the smart boys who f*ck like they’re composing a piece of math rock…etc. Then there’s Nick.Amy finds herself drawn to him because he is so gorgeous–distractingly gorgeous…”he looks like the rich-boy villain in an 80’s teen movie–the one who bullies the sensitive misfit, the one who will end up with a pie in the puss, the whipped cream wilting his upturned collar as everyone in the cafeteria cheers.” And then there’s his smile. “Like a cat’s smile. He should cough out yellow Tweety Bird feathers, the way he smiles at me.”
We get a good look at how Amy project into the future, imagining an established relationship with Nick, when she thinks, “A year from now we will be walking along the Brooklynn Bridge at sunset and one of us will whisper, “Just one olive, though,” and we will start to laugh (at the inside joke).” Then Amy says, “I catch myself. Awful. If he knew I was doing a year from now already, he’d run and I’d be obliged to cheer him on.”
Already we know Amy is smart—scary smart–and manipulative–scary manipulative–and demanding and spoiled and New York pompous and….but we really don’t know the real Amy yet at all. But for that matter, nor do we know the real Nick.