ABSTRACT

The title Gone Girl expresses the atmosphere of mystery and suspense with which the book opens: a girl disappears, Amy Eliott Dunne. On Amy and Nick's fifth wedding anniversary, Amy suddenly disappears and the details of the anniversary prove to be important. Amy celebrates the anniversary of this young sophisticated couple, who met five years earlier in the New York of literary and intellectual circles, with bizarre treasure hunts: a succession of clues and messages for Nick that lead to his present, the treasure. The ritual anniversary game reveals from the outset a central aspect of this couple – the asymmetry, with Nick's inevitable resulting sense of inferiority, although masked, as he has to live up to expectations each year. Acceptance and elaboration of ambivalence, the only possible final alternative and advisedly more "healthy", does not prove to be a feasible chance for their internal worlds and their bonds.