Sunday, October 05, 2014

7 Books to Scratch Your Gone Girl Itch




What to read while you wait for David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s blockbuster novel, Gone Girl (or to fill the void once you’ve seen it)? You’ve already conquered Flynn’s own backlist, and you’ve read all the Tana French you can get your hands on. You need a book that will grab your attention and mess with your head like Gone Girl. A spirited tale that will make you question the foundations of marriage and whether or not you can ever truly know another person, maybe where a woman literally leaves or goes missing, with an unconventional structure, shifting narrative perspective, slow reveals, insight into the everyday horror of existing as a woman in the world, and hopefully, some suspense. These seven recent novels should keep you busy until you see Nick and Amy on the big screen. (Suspense being key to many of these stories, spoilers for this list and Gone Girl have been carefully avoided.)

1. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
Mandel’s spectacular, unmissable new novel is set in a near-future dystopia, after most — seriously, 99.99 percent — of the world’s population is killed suddenly and swiftly by a flu pandemic. (Have fun riding the subway after this one!) The perspective shifts between a handful of survivors, all connected to a famous actor who died onstage just before the collapse. A literary page-turner, impeccably paced, which celebrates the world lost while posing questions about art, fame, and what endures after everything, and everyone, is gone.


2. NW, by Zadie Smith
Smith’s most recent novel, and her most structurally playful work, centers on childhood BFFs Leah and Natalie (known in childhood as Keisha, she rechristens herself as part of creating her own life) in the eponymous NW London neighborhood where they grow up. Each of the five sections of the book follows a different character and employs a distinctively different style. Natalie’s section is in turn subdivided into 185 short chapters. When Natalie’s Craigslist affairs are exposed, she escapes her husband and home and wanders NW with an old classmate. Like Gone Girl, NW is preoccupied with facades, the ways people construct and present themselves, and the unknowability of anyone, especially the people you are closest to.


3. A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride
With the most unconventional narrative structure of this group by far, McBride’s novel is a blazing, unexpected, punch-in-the-face revelation. The half-formed girl narrates in propulsive fragments (“I couldn’t bide the loud Do not”), like Flynn’s “cool girl” speech gone off the rails in the most wonderfully frightening way. Once you submit to the destabilizing rhythm of the prose, the book is wildly compelling and unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

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