Gone Girl, a review

Last night I finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It seemed to be THE book of the summer, and contrary as always, I read it in the fall.

A friend of mine told me it was a great read, filled with lots of twists. I did indeed find plot turns at unexpected places, and the book itself had that elusive Compelling Factor that made me want to keep reading.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. For one thing, I couldn't emotionally connect with any of the characters except Boney, the police detective, and she was a background figure who appeared in only a few scenes. (I think I would have enjoyed the book much more if it had been told from her perspective, but perhaps it would have been a stretch.)

Maybe I'm too much of a traditionalist : I expected more of a cozier read, and Flynn instead offers a harrowing tale of marriage turned inside out. That's not a bad thing at all, and it betrays my own shortcoming, not Flynn's.

When Amy disappears, her husband, Nick, begins a search for her. The disappearance itself is strange, and it grows stranger as the book goes on. It is their wedding anniversary, and Amy always leaves him a scavenger hunt for his gift. In the book, the scavenger hunt is intertwined with the disappearance.

Amy herself is a wonderful creation. She was nothing like what I expected - she's no victim having the vapours, that much is for certain. And that is a wonderful, rare thing. What she is - what the reader thinks she is - gets turned on its head as the story progresses.

The ending is pure genius, but as I said, I never connected with any of the characters. I never read a chapter saying, "Oh no, oh no!" the way I would if I really loved the hero or the heroine. That's a biproduct of the twisty, turning plot, and I can understand that and the genius behind it, but the lack of connection was my visceral reaction.

Missouri, captured perfectly in the novel

As I said, it was compelling. I never wanted to stop reading it, which is a mark of an assured, professional writer. Flynn's prose is deft enough to bring you into several different worlds, from Manhattan to Missouri. I would recommend downloading the sample on Kindle to see if you like it first.

To be honest, I enjoyed Sax and the Suburb and Terps by Elaine Gannon much more (the second, alas, is out of print.) Sax is a jazzy murder mystery, and Terps is a tender, honest story of a marriage, and I was able to connect with the characters in those books right away. But I do appreciate Gone Girl as a completely different, new sort of detective story.

The Fly on the Wall, by Elaine Gannon

 I'm lucky enough to have Elaine Gannon, author of Terps, here today. Her book is about an interpreter of sign language (shortened to "terp" - hence the title.) Elaine herself is a "Terp," and she has written  this essay about what it is like.

“How did you get into sign language?”

People ask me this all the time. Hearing people who know nothing about it. Deaf people who know plenty and who are curious about where their interpreters are coming from. They want to know if their interpreters are codas (children of Deaf adults) or if they picked the language up as adults. While I admit to not being a coda, I am always quick to add that my husband is Deaf. I don’t know what this makes me, but it does buy me a bit of credibility when I first meet a Deaf consumer.

It’s a weird career, being the ears and voice of other people. When I’m interpreting, I’m not there. Hearing people try to start up side conversations with me, but I just sign whatever they’re saying to the Deaf person and refrain from being the one to respond. It’s not my conversation. Sometimes I interpret interesting chatter and long to be a participant instead of a conduit of communication, but I can’t. I’m a tool being used by the Deaf person at that moment. Sometimes I know more about a subject than the person who is speaking, but I can’t interject a quick statement of my own to make everyone else’s conversation clearer. I’m not there.

Most people have no idea of how to use me. I’m often asked to relay messages when I’m only supposed to interpret a person’s exact words as they’re being spoken. Hearing clients speak of Deaf participants in the third person while watching me instead of watching the person with whom they are actually speaking. “Tell her…Could you ask her...? Does she know if…?” Even then, it’s not my job to say, “Tell her yourself. I’ll interpret.” It’s tempting, but that’s up to the Deaf consumer to handle.

One of the most interesting things about being absorbed into the culture that exists where hearing and Deaf overlap is just how normal it is to be Deaf and to be among the Deaf. It’s just another language—and a beautiful one. Whenever I include a hearing non-signer in a Deaf event, it’s the hearing person who has the disability in that instance. Deaf people have a rich culture and a fascinating history in this country and it continues to grow more complicated as more people attempt to “fix” them with technology. It’s been that way since Alexander Graham Bell tried to do away with Sign Language and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

It’s an honor to be a fly on the wall in so many people’s lives.

(If you are interested in reading Terps, you can find it here.)