Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and, most recently, The Widow: girls make for good pageturners.
But Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins and Fiona Barton are looking to tell different kinds of stories about girls.
In a BookPage interview, Gillian Flynn tries to explain why Gone Girl captured “the popular imagination so thoroughly”.
“It’s perhaps in part because America is still a place where we are most comfortable with women fitting the very specific role of selfless caretaker.”
But as Amy Scribner says: “Flynn doesn’t write about that kind of woman.”
This was in December 2012 and Gone Girl has continued to capture readers who were apparently bored with stories about selfless, caretaking girls.
“I write for people who are readers the way I’m a reader. I don’t care if I dislike a character; I care if I find them interesting or they make me laugh, or if I’m trying to figure them out. I am always more interested in that.” (The Guardian, interview with Emma Brockes October 2, 2014)
And readers do want to figure out this novel, but even more to the point, publishers want to figure out where its appeal lies.
Its author is more circumspect: “You’re never, ever going to repeat that thing – it was its own weird lightning in a bottle kind of thing. My job is to never, ever try to replicate that, because that’s how you write a really bad novel.” (Kate Tuttle Salon, November 3, 2015)
What is the Gone Girl formula?
At the heart of the story is trust — and distrust.
In the context of intimacy — and alienation.
Against a backdrop of desire — and despondence.
And these elements are present in all three of these novels: Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and The Widow.
Just as the blurbs and teasers for the later novels refer back to the dramatic success of Gone Girl, the themes of the novels intersect and reverberate.
To illustrate the point, here are some quotes. (Note: each of the novels contains multiple POVs, so you will have hard time deducing the source from details about the narrators, and I won’t name the sources so we can avoid spoilers.)
“Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that’s how the hating first began. I’ve thought about this a lot, and that’s where it started, I think.”
“It’s going to be hard. It might be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I’m going to tell the truth. No more lies, no more hiding, no more running, no more bullshit. I’m going to put everything out in the open, and then we’ll see.”
“I wonder whether they are there, whether he knows, whether he’s left, or whether he’s still living a life he’s yet to discover is a lie.”
True selves and open declarations, pretensions and deceits: these are the stuff of girls who are not made out of sugar and spice and everything nice.
And the wife? She is the primary person-of-interest. As Fiona Barton explains, regarding the spark for The Widow, which dated to her years working as a journalist:
“When I was sitting in court, often I’d find myself looking at the family, not the victim’s [family], but the accused’s…. Often that was the wife. What does it feel like to be hearing this, to find out stuff about someone you thought you knew? Are you standing by him? What do you know or don’t know?”
(Bookseller, interview with Sarah Shaffi, November 13, 2015)
But the wife? It’s not a static role, remember? This is not The Tale of June Cleaver or The Adventures of Betty Draper. These stories are aiming elsewhere.
“My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers.”
“But I can’t believe … She wasn’t unhappy with me. She wasn’t. She wasn’t.’ When he says it the third time, I wonder whether he’s trying to convince himself. ‘But if she was having an affair, she must have been unhappy, mustn’t she?’”
“I can’t do this, I can’t just be a wife. I don’t understand how anyone does it – there is literally nothing to do but wait. Wait for a man to come home and love you. Either that, or look around for something to distract you.”
But is the un-wife really such a remarkable character? Are the trajectories of these plots so integrally different from stories of years past?
Consider Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, Jane Smiley’s The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. These female characters offer complexity and contradictions, challenge expectations and norms, and embody the un-wife.
So perhaps the appeal of these novels in the Gone Girl vein isn’t so much the narrators after all. I think their appeal is connected to a more fundamental element, the questions that niggle in the backs of our minds about trust.
As Fiona Barton writes: “The imagination is such as powerful tool, suggestion is all you need,” she says. “People fill in gaps. It is much more chilling if you’re doing it yourself, if you don’t have it laid out.”
What do we readers make of the gaps in our lives? They’re everywhere in these novels. Some characters identify them others create them.
“I sometimes leave out details like that. It’s more convenient for me. In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn’t have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation. I was sometimes as guilty of playing the figure-me-out game as [she] was. I’ve left that bit of information out too.”
Beneath all of it?
“There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.”
“They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be.”
And, perhaps most niggly of all: “People want to believe they know other people. Parents want to believe they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their husbands.”
These stories aren’t simply about (or for) girls. Or boys. (But would anybody try to market The Boy on the Train?)
These are human stories, dressed in wisps of hair and tendrils of mist. And the archetypal theme of trust/betrayal is not new.
It’s difficult to see how these “girls” really are all that different. Perhaps they are not as selfless, not as consumed by caregiving. And, yet, they are wholly absorbed by their relationship with a man.
Is it really such a new idea to suggest that allowing one relationship to obliterate all other aspects of one’s life (particularly when it is a troubled relationship) isn’t smart?
Blurred and amorphous, the girls leap from novel to novel, one readily muddled with the next, in a series of entertaining and profitable novels that are as much about following the rules as breaking them.
Have you read any of these? Or, do you plan to read one/some?
Her by Harriet Lane doesn’t really fit with these books, which I just read are being called ‘chick noir’. That’s a little better than ‘the next Gone Girl’.
Do you mean the link to my review? Wait til you’ve read Her to come by and read it. I liked Her the best of the 3 I reviewed that day, but I talked too much about the ending.
she has a more subtle touch, but it’s all-the-more-unsettling for that, I’d say.
Exactly!!
Ooh… this is so interesting. You’re good at digging deep. If I could read faster, I think it would be really fun to read in themes like this and compare. But I’m too slow, and by the time I’m done one, I’m usually ready for something completely different (most of the time). Right now I’m reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and I thought it would be fun to read The Translation of Love next (Lynne Kutsukake), but we’ll see…
I read Gone Girl long ago and it was a fun read, but I didn’t like it as much as most people do. I guess it’s just not my thing. I’m not against reading the others at all, but I’m also not in a rush to. I do own The Widow, and I imagine that at some point The Girl on the Train will show up at the thrift shop – the popular books usually do eventually. 🙂
The question of trust and whether or not we really know someone is really interesting. It’s scary when it comes to children – getting into terrible things like shooting/suicides and the parents being as shocked as everyone else. I am fascinate and terrified of that at the same time. The trusting your spouse issue also makes me think of The Silent Wife. I liked that one.
Thanks for reminding me about The Silent Wife, Naomi: I really did mean to try that one. I think it was a piece on CBC’s “The Next Chapter” which landed it firmly on my TBR, but quite likely something you’ve said is niggling in the back of my mind to.
Everytime I’m in the library now, I see either a couple copies of Gone Girl or Girl on the Train. I don’t think readers are bored with them yet. Another that would make a good one to include here would be S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which I found quite gripping (it, too, has a diary aspect to it, like Gone Girl).
There would be some great companion reads for your bookclub read. Lynne Kutsukake’s novel is on my TBR too. But you are actually quite busy with theme reading in your own time: your alphabet project, the Atlantic Canada writing, and of course the Halifax explosion reads!
I guess you’re right – I do have some long-term theme reading going on. 🙂
I think I actually liked Before I Go To Sleep even better than Gone Girl. I loved the memory loss aspect of it, even though that sounds morbid. Memory books would make another good theme!
I did a post somewhat like this (not nearly as insightful or literary!) comparing 3 books I called part of the ‘Gone Girl’ phenomenom – The Widow; In a Dark, Dark, Wood; and Her by Harriet Lane. I called it ‘Bitches Be Crazy’
I’ve read all 3 of your books here and I can’t figure out the quotes completely. That would be a fun game!
For the record in my opinion, Gone Girl has been the best book. I have been very impressed with Harriet Lane’s books as well, but they are done a bit quieter.
Oooo, RG, I really liked Harriet Lane’s Alys, Always. I would agree that she has a more subtle touch, but it’s all-the-more-unsettling for that, I’d say. Her is on my TBR and now I wish I’d read it with this set (or maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t?). Did you read Gone Girl first? I’d imagine that reading them in the order of publication would have left me increasingly disappointed, if I’d been waiting for the “next Gone Girl” with each subsequent title. (You’re very kind. I like your title! If you find the link, include it in another comment if you please.)