The Most Addictive Books of the Last 25 Years
Here they are, in no particular order: the books we passed on to our closest friends,
fought over at book club, lugged with us on every move and think about still. You can
view the full list or start with...
3 of 34
Gone Girl
By Gillian Flynn
422 pages;
Broadway Books
Because
Flynn nails an age-old fear: Do we really know the people closest to us?
"You could
imagine the skull quite easily" is just the kind of sentiment you wish
serial killers would keep to themselves. It's also one of the first things Nick
Dunne—the handsome, smarmy, admittedly dishonest
narrator of the opening chapter of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl—tells us about "the finely shaped head"
of his wife, Amy. Make that his missing wife, Amy, who just happens to disappear from
their Missouri home on the morning of their fifth anniversary, fueling a
small-town melodrama—complete with middling cops, fame-hungry
neighbors, and cable-TV news crews—in her wake. As the story unfolds in
precise and riveting prose, alternating between Nick's voice and Amy's diaries
chronicling their relationship, it quickly becomes clear that theirs was not
the happiest marriage, and that Nick, "a big fan of the lie of
omission," is hiding information not only from the police, but also from
readers. Still, even while you know you're being manipulated, searching for the
missing pieces is half the thrill of this wickedly absorbing tale.
— Ruth Baron
Published 04/03/2015