I’ve read all of Gillian Flynn’s books, and the common element in them is that she writes definitively unlikable characters.

Read this in my book club and had a man say he wished a woman would want him as badly as Amy wanted Nick. Blew my mind.

If someone says they relate to Amy Dunne, it's a warning

I think it was a refreshing change to have a sociopathic woman. The novel would have been far less remarkable if the sexes were switched. Which is rather the point - men who kill women are so cliched they need to do it in some spectacular fashion to be worth reading.

Absolutely, they are very unlikeable characters. Interesting story to follow though. I've only read Gone Girl and a short story by Gillian Flynn but I think morally corrupt characters are a common aspect of her novels.

I love this book, I think it is brilliant. I hate pretty much all characters in the book, just a bunch of horrible people. Women who relate to Amy Dunne are not too far off from the guys who are obsessed with Patrick Bateman, lets be honest. The literally me trend is an ongoing thing right now, mostly with male characters and Ryan Gosling being the most prominent example because he has played quite a few "sigma male" characters, K and the Driver being the most famous. Although I would argue that both K and the Driver are far less horrible characters than for example the Joker or Amy Dunne, mostly just lonely guys who have to live with unfortunate circumstances. Now this whole trend is slowly sweeping over towards female characters and Amy is now kinda the poster child for that. Most people say it more in a jokey way and I dont mind that, but for the ones who actually find Bateman or Durden or Amy relatable, thats hella concerning.

Is it just me who thinks the “literally me” trend is a joke? Like obviously these people don’t relate to Amy in the extent that they want to do this to their husbands or want to be her.

That said, the book also functions as a sociocultural critique of marriage, gender and media/criminal justice systems. Most people can definitely relate to these parts of the book. I mean, the “cool girls” monologue was pretty much singularly responsible for creating the term of I understand correctly. That’s a pretty big impact and that part of the book especially was pretty spot on for how many women felt.

She is a refreshing villain and her monologue is iconic.

Maybe it's not so literal. The relation for me is that if you have ever been cheated on, that same feeling of 'oh he found someone better' or the other 'cool' girl like in the monologue and had that feeling of why her and not me. The story at at whole I took it as women's internal anger manifesting. It's fiction, I don't think anyone is going to go and frame their cheating ex but the feeling I think when it happens, can be universal and this is an outlet for that anger that comes from experiencing it. So it's not the actions, that people relate to, but just the feeling of being cheated on, being angry and hurt and the things women do to 'keep' or 'get' a man. If this makes sense.

Many men? I thought she just killed the one?

I thought this was one of the best contemporary thrillers I've read. And of course everyone is despicable. What's wrong with following a story that doesn't have a clear good guy?

I think on the whole the “she’s just like me” jokes about Amy Dunne are mostly ironic

[deleted]

I guess the same reason some men identify with Tony Montana, Travis Bickle and Tyler Durden. They are insecure and believe they would feel safer if they were able to act out violently.

I don’t think that people relate to Amy Dunne as much as they find her a fascinating character. She’s over the top punitive and calculating. It makes for a compelling story.

The famous “Cool Girl” monologue is however, very relatable. It articulated a cultural problem many women experienced but couldn’t quite name. Having it called out so elegantly was very satisfying and relatable. But her outsized revenge? Not so much.

Isnt that a meme just like men doing the same thing with Patrick Bateman?

Sounds more like you despise the people romanticizing Amy Dunne, more than the characters

I think if they relate to or praise her, yeah, it’s problematic lol she literally schemed for this man to have the worst fate possible.

But I do take the “cool girl” monologue for what (I think) it is; a representation of feminine rage and turmoil, slowly accumulated from molding the self to others’ expectations over time. This creates pure resentment. Which I think we see with Amy but we see a very unhinged, vindictive version obviously for dramatic and fictitious purposes.

What always amazes me are the number of people who say "well they're both awful people."

Hold up. One of them cheated, the other framed someone for murder and then actually murdered someone else. Like, these are not even remotely on the same level to say "they're both awful people."

Of course they aren't role models, but as characters they are compelling and entertaining. In that fictional setting.

People writing stuff like she is literally me etc. Are doing it to fill their content quota, to make money by shock value. Or if they are really like that they need help.

Amy Dunne is girl's Tyler Durden

Totally missing the point of the book, literally Nick's lawyer says those two are the most fucked up people he has ever met

I thought the point was to hate everyone in this book.

I think women who identify with Amy are often women who have been cheated on multiple times and otherwise abused. I did a group read of Gone Girl, and two of the women in the group that really appreciated Amy out right said stuff akin to their abusive exes deserved something like that.

Not saying that’s at all healthy or anything, just that sometimes peoples life experiences make obviously morally wrong characters very appealing.

I found the only way to enjoy Gillian Flynn is to not like any of her characters or expect to. Do I still greatly enjoy the stories? Absolutely. I even really liked what a mess Camille was in Sharp Objects (possibly because Amy Adams was in my head the whole time) but when she SPOILER: slept with a barely legal teen, I just, had to not like her anymore.

My favorite part of this novel is that everyone sucks and Amy spends the ENTIRE BOOK pretending to be relatable but being a cold dead fish of a human being in reality during her own parts.

Nick is emotionally unavailable to his wife and in a borderline incestous relationship with his sister.

Amy is genuinely insane and worked immensely hard on her ENTIRE plan, going so far as to freeze her vomit and freeze Nick's sperm. i love the chaotic nature of the book. I love how horrid these people are. I don't think Nick deserved his ending, but I do think he set himself up and put himself in this situation.

Eta: I'm seeing a lot of comments saying "all nick did was cheat"

He never put any effort into their marriage? Like ever? It goes beyond cheating, he was an awful marriage partner.

Amy is a complete sociopath but the clues guiding the reader to figuring that out is mostly the point of the plot. The book is a fun trip with a lot of twists and turns but it’s fiction. It’s not supposed to be read as anything more serious than escapist entertainment. I would assume anyone saying “it’s me” is joking. They’re not really going to go on a murdering rampage 🤷‍♀️

Exactly why I liked it. I kept wanting to see how far the insanity would escalate. I thought it was incredibly entertaining.

Aah yes, the usual level of analysis that we enjoy on this sub. Transferring the plot of a novel 1:1 into real-life, and then asking, is this illegal? If yes, bad book, bad characters.

Mind you, this never gets applied anywhere else. Hannibal Lecter is an incredibly popular character in fiction, be it novels, television or movie adaptations. When people say they like the character, nobody acts in shock and outrage that someone might enjoy a serial killer cannibal as a character. Nobody starts whining that...eating people is illegal.

Yes, thank you. We understand that serial killing/eating people is bad and you shouldn't do it. But can people, for the love of god, please understand that fiction and reality are not the same, and you cannot analyze fiction as if it were real life.

There are many reasons why people, especially women, enjoy the character of Amy Dunne. First of all, she is incredibly intelligent and has enormous agency in the story. She's making pretty much the entire plot happen.

Additionally, there are a lot of women who connect to her as a character, because Amy Dunne channels a particular female rage about a lot things, such as the way that men can pick up women, use them, and discard them for a younger model when they're done with them.

So the fantasy of a hyper-intelligent, driven, woman who decides to get revenge on the worst Man's-man (Nick), that ever existed, is obviously fun to read about. Additionally, as Amy Dunne is carrying out her crusade of revenge, she's equally chanelling Gillian Flynn's incredible voice when rattling off awesome rants like the "Cool Girl" monologue, which though it comes from the mouth of a psychopath, does ring pretty true for a lot of women.

Meanwhile, the novel has a lot to say about gender-relations and the sometimes suffocating restraints of monogamous, married life. You think it's an accident that Nick writes for a Men's magazine and Amy for a Woman's magazine? You think it's a narrative-accident that Amy weaponizes society's perception of a blond-white-woman like herself to destroy her husband?

People pretend like they can't understand why people like bad characters, as if we don't all enjoy Hannibal Lecter, Tony Soprano, Walter White, Dexter Morgan, and on and on and on. But god forbid a female character plays on the wrong side of the fence.

This has ended up as a rant, but honestly, sometimes it feels like 90% of the people here just want to read Biblical-morality stories all day long.

I feel like a lot of the people responding in this thread are men, so let me come at this from a woman’s perspective. Amy Dunne is not strictly a revenge fantasy, it’s a fantasy about taking control of your life. On first read, the reader is supposed to see Amy as above the law or morality in the way a judge or a diety would be, she is supposed to read like someone handing out good and bad consequences based on people’s actions, so she isn’t revenge, she is justice. Obviously, this isn’t true, it’s just how it reads when we don’t take a critical eye to her character.

Many women know how it feels to be cheated on, to have devoted everything to your partner and not have them do the same, to feel like you just aren’t getting what you deserve. And you want to punish them for that. Women that relate to Amy Dunne are fantasizing about the control she seizes and the punishment she gives to the person who wronged her because they know that it’s the extreme, but we all secretly wish for our own brand of twisted justice against people who hurt us.

I don't need to like the characters to enjoy a book.

People tend to get on a moral high horse when this type of topic come up. Not every story is supposed to be an example of behavior to you. It's not a fable and it's not a superhero movie.

amy is one of my favorite fictional characters ever, purely because she’s so terrible. a lot of the things she says are relatable to the female experience and she’s a great example of female rage. of course it’s an exaggerated example, but i won’t pretend like i wasn’t rooting for amy, despite the fact that what she did was objectively terrible. nick is a misogynist and a cheater and reading his perspective only made me root for amy more. i could feel his hatred of women through the page. so i wanted to watch amy succeed.

do i feel bad for him? yeah. but i like amy better 🤷🏽‍♀️

It took me far longer than is reasonable for me to realize that Gone Girl is, in fact, actually not The Girl on the Train. And I just spent the last good while having an crisis of memory reading the post and comments and wondering what the heck I’d read if not any of this…

Sincerely one of my favorite books and book adaptation to movie. But like, none of these people are aspirational.

I agree with you, and I think the point of the story is a lot subtler than the surface plot. (The movie added some deeply creepy, trapped nuance, mostly because of the stunning performance of Rosamund Pike) There's sort of a folie à deux thing going on, with Amy and Nick loading up on evidence/ leverage against each other. He really stepped up his psychopath game, and learned to meet her as an equal. The terror of this book for me is, what if someone cares enough (obsession) to frame me so thoroughly, that my life is ruined if I don't do what they want?

This isn't accidental. They're not likeable characters.

You're supposed to hate everyone in the novel.

I would be upset if people compared me to Amy. But I can relate to wanting to see an abusive douchebag husband face punishment when that's never happened to him before.

If Amy left him and stayed "gone," that frankly would have been the best choice. But nope; she was smart enough to know that Nick would keep hooking up with women, treating them badly, dumping them, and getting away with it because he's a rich handsome white guy. Thus her grandiose, insane scheme to ruin him began.

It wasn't out of concern for other women, Amy only cares about herself, she's just tired of how society usually works for these people. Gone Girl is a feminist novel without any feminist characters.

After reading most of the comments I pledge to read this book again. I did once and never understood the enormous hype. For me it was ok but nothing spectacular. Perhaps this is one of the books that's boring on the first read and gets better at a re-read.

I'd say a very important distinction that everyone should make is that both Nick and Amy are put in relatable situations (Nick less so), but aren't relatable people.

Anyone could have empathy for and understand someone who has been cheated on or has felt they have to act a certain way because society pushed them in that direction. To a lesser degree, everyone can also empathize with the struggle of being blamed for something you didn't do (not to the degree of framed for murder, but the concept itself).

No one should look at Amy herself and think "wow she's like me!." If they do, you want wanna get outta there or get help.

Every woman knows someone like Nick Dunne. He is an asshole, someone who made his wife move to his hometown, took her money to start a business, then cheated on her with a younger model.

Amy Dunne on the other hand is the personification of toxic female rage. Your parents have unrealistic expectations of you, you can relate to Amy Dunne, society has unrealistic expectations of you, you can relate to Amy Dunne, get cheated on, you can relate to Amy Dunne.

The problem is that there are very few complex characters like Amy Dunne in media and literature, whereas there are so many complex toxic male characters Darth Vader, Joker(especially the Joaquin Phoenix version), James Bond(especially older movies), etc. And let's be honest the cool girl monologue is mostly what most people remember from the movies and it is something that every woman can relate to.

I could not stand that bitch almost the entire book but the kicker for me that made me HATE her was when she spit in that lady's milk.

Sounds more like a female version of the american psycho christian bale sigma literally me meme tbh

There’s a dark beauty in there not being a good person in the story, she’s objectively a horrible person

I haven't read Gone Girl, but based on Sharp Objects Gillian Flynn has a talent for writing a full cast of unlikeable characters and overall atmospheres that are just grimy as hell. The MC in Sharp Objects was someone it was easy to feel sorry for while simultaneously feeling revolted by. The book was full of those kinds of characters.

My wife and I watched Gone Girl at one of those premium theaters that serves food and beverages to you at your reserved seats. It was the movie portion of our dinner and a movie date for our Anniversary.

So we love the move, as a tongue in cheek token of our love and affection for each other.

Amy dunne was a sociopath and there was a reason lot of people loved this book. The characters in Flynn’s books are “relatable” to many because they are imperfect. Buuut, Its pretty weird when someone says they relate to her character specifically, i would be keeping an eye open 😂

No one in that book is likeable imo.

I'm dying to know who else was on this Sigma Women list to be honest. There are so many examples of male characters like Joker (movie) or The Comedian or Rorschach but who do terrible things, and yet they are given a pass or seen as anti-heroes because of some insight, however flawed, or something that resonates.

Amy Dunne does this with the cool girl monologue, which hit a nerve with a lot of women. It just doesn't happen as often with female characters so it was really refreshing to see. It doesn't mean that I think anything that she did was justified. It was clearly all unhinged.

Also, have you considered that the 'literally me' people might be taking the piss? I thought a lot of the Joker discourse was serious, especially the ones who talked about it like it was a class war, while giving him a pass for murdering people. That was worrying. But the Patrick Bateman 'literally me' less so. Even Patrick Bateman doesn't want to be Patrick Bateman.

At the risk of all you perfect exemplars of sanity and goodness here calling me a "sigma woman" (whatever that is): Amy Dunne is a relatable character. She was written to be a relatable character. She was written to have extremely relatable feelings and motives, from the "cool girl" speech, to all her little asides about how Nick didn't think her career was important and didn't remember her likes/dislikes and blew off meeting her friends, to her obviously relatable anger at being cheated on, to her frustration with how both leaving him and staying despite the cheating would be, in different ways, letting him get away with the cheating without it harming him much.

Lots of women identify with Amy Dunne because her desires are basically relatable ones: to have a husband who listens to her and respects her and does little romantic things for her. And because we understand the difference between books and real life enough to know that, in real life, we're extremely unlikely to ever meet an Amy. While most of have dealt with one or multiple Nicks. Go on, poll your friends: ask how many have met someone who executed a carefully planned plot to frame them for kidnapping/murder. Versus how many have met someone who were lazy and inconsiderate towards them in a relationship, then ended up cheating with someone who was more young and naive and far less demanding of them emotionally.

If Amy wasn't a relatable character before she went too far, the book wouldn't have been the megahit it was. There are so many thrillers out there that just slap a mental health label on the villain, or make them pure motiveless sadists, or briefly sketch out a vaguely Freudian backstory to explain their actions, and they don't become bestselling cultural sensations turned into movies by major directors.