What Some Would Call An Unnecessarily Angry Guest Post

Here’s a helpful tip for fellow bloggers – when someone requests a guest post rather than say, reluctantly giving into one, it is because they are going to rant and rave.  And likely you will be harshly targeted as the blog author.  Luckily this chick isn’t my boss anymore because it sounds like I likely would have been fired around chapter 5.  Lazy blogger that I am, I will still post this in a desperate attempt to maintain/beg for readership.  The below is unedited, which will quickly become obvious.  Especially from the screaming.

I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and am mourning the hours wasted on this book that are also gone and *spoiler alert* won't ultimately return. 

Bookworm & Loyal Reader Liz in happier times.
Aligned in fashion; at odds on literature.

As a loyal follower of the Paperback Bookworm, I have always held her literary opinions in high esteem.  She even piled my arms full of books at a bookstore once, accompanied said pile with the order "Okay, buy these," and without a moment's hesitation, I put my credit card on the counter and left with every single recommendation she gave me. 

Such was my prior faith in the Bookworm. 

I say "prior" because I see Gone Girl staring at me from its perch on the third rung of "Current Favorites", and CANNOT FATHOM what it did to deserve such an honor.  I've been told by the Bookworm herself that it was "a page-turner!" and that she "thought the way the story was told was so cool!"  Well, I. am. sorry.  Page-turner?  That's your qualifier?  If that's the case, why not go ahead and stick The Da Vinci Code on that list of favorites.  And a gimmicky device like diary entries?  I'd rather re-read "e: A Novel".  Or if it was the alternating first-person perspectives that really won you over, give me "The Time-Traveler's Wife" any day. 

Initially, I struggled to identify exactly what about this book made me hate it, when according to Amazon, only 10% of reviewers share my opinion.  At first, I was distracted by Amy's father-in-law, Rand Elliott, as I know a man named Rand Elliott in real life and he's a complete kook.  I struggled to reconcile Amy's uptight East Coast psychologist/author father with an eccentric architect that looks like he crawled off the set of Beetlejuice. 

But soon I went from being distracted, to being annoyed, to simply hating the whole book. Ultimately, I think what had initially intrigued me about Gone Girl - which was, embarrassingly, an interview with Gillian Flynn on The View in which she was praised for writing about what goes on behind closed doors in a marriage - is exactly what made me hate it.  This marriage would never exist because these people don't exist. And not in a well-of-course-they-don't-it's-fiction sort of way.  I mean that when I read a book, even if the main character is a serial killer on Mars, I need to feel that he/she/it could exist in real life.  That the author has enough familiarity with human behavior they are able to create a somewhat plausible character. 

It's the same rationale for why I hated Samantha Jones on "Sex and the City".  That person would never exist in real life, as that's simply not how women are wired.  Same goes for Amy.  Diary Amy?  Neurotic, but believable.  Actual Amy?  Come on.  Nick came (this close) to being salvageable as a character, but blew it in the end.  Amy's parents were a joke, as was that awful Desi.  Go was the only central character that was remotely plausible and if she did exist in real life, she would annoy me.   

Bookworm, your other recommendations are going to collect dust on the shelf a little while longer until I am able to trust you again.  (Or at least until I'm done with Jeanette Walls' FABULOUS memoir, The Glass Castle.)

All my love to World's Best Dog Norman,

Loyal Reader Liz