Idyllic to Horrific

"Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn   Crown Publishers   419 pages   $25

I've been seeing the above listed on the New York Times Bestseller List for a long time.  When I ran across the book in the library, I checked it out.  It's okay to keep reading this; I don't give the ending.

She's a New Yorker from birth.  He's from a smallish town in Missouri.  Together they are the "cool couple" leading the frantically cool New York lifestyle -- friends' gallery openings, off-Broadway theater, best and closest take-out places, hottest new restaurants -- they know their way around.

And then ... he's fired from his writing job at a magazine; she's fired, too!  His mother is diagnosed with cancer.  They can't get jobs; they're soon not going to be able to pay the mortgage.  So he says, "Back to Missouri - pack what you can't live without."

She hates small town life, but endures it for two long years.  And then, on the morning of their fifth anniversary, she disappears.

What happens next is very interesting.  Flynn is talented at manipulating the reader's thoughts/opinions about various characters and their acts.  Her microscope ignores no detail.  It's a good summertime read.  Save the Ibsen for winter!