Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn – Episode 144

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1586869/episodes/19565608

The Buddies escape into Gillian Flynn’s 2012 psychological thriller “Gone Girl”. The Buddies tried to lighten the mood after reading this dark twist-and-turny book. They got to debating about Amy’s parents and if they could have avoided raising a psychopath, the extremely short shelf life of eggs Benedict, and whether Desi Collings is a romantic hero or just a guy who watched The Notebook one too many times. So hide your frozen vomit, practice your treasure hunt clues, and join us for a pod that asks: which is harder, being poor for 10 days or framing your husband for murder?

Intro (0:00-0:52)

Stock Up/Down (0:53-41:19)

Favorite Scene/Character (42:22-51:04)

Love/Hate (51:05-58:27)

Conclusion (58:28-1:03:34) 

NEXT BOOK: Redwall by Brian Jacques

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

All right welcome to Booklub.
I’m Dylan, you’re with a man who smiles a lot to make up for his face.
Keith, what’s up buddy?
I’m here with D-Man aka Boney.
What? It’s terrible.
It’s so terrible.
Well here at the Buddy Booklub we’re going to get down to the best dollars
and this week we’ll be discussing
2012’s Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read, which is how we got this one.
It was a listener reached out on Instagram and said, “Hey, I’d like to show our
projects episode, will you do Gone Girl?”
And I said, “Absolutely.”
So yeah, if you want to reach out to us any books you read or any past episodes
you can visit our website at bookhop.com,
site.org/dm/twitter/insurrem.
That’s BuddyBooklub podcast.
You can just tune Spotify, please download and subscribe.
But let’s get to stock up stock up.
What do you have for stock up?
Warning fame, stock up. Most people that want fame are just sickos that read books and start
a book called podcast and so they’re rambling so…
That’s why you got to do this?
…get me a hurt.
But I think that the aim of this book, which I didn’t see pointed out when I was reading my
Wikipedia notes, is that people will kind of do anything for fame in this day of age.
You got Amy’s parents who are basically promoting their books while pleading for Amy’s return.
They’re like, just like amazing Amy would do.
They’re like, on sale now!
Okay, tone it down a little bit.
Hey, the creditors are not getting their door, you know?
We got Noel Hawthorne interrupting a candlelight vigil to announce Amy is pregnant.
It’s like, you couldn’t do that any other time.
You’re just trying to get a little bit of attention to yourself.
We got Tanner Bolt, who kind of specializes in offending murderous husbands.
And his whole thing is like, I got, you know, at the end of the book, he’s like,
I got Nick off, so like all these other guys are innocent now.
Questionable there, then we got Andy holding a press conference.
If I’m Andy in a hersage version, I’m just not telling a soul about this, right?
Oh, absolutely not. No way. So you would be telling?
No, no, I’m not telling. I’m not telling.
I’m not telling. I wouldn’t.
Yeah, so weird, so it just seemed like everyone…
Plus the woman who took the photo with him.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I couldn’t do anything.
Cornered Amy at the thing, yeah, I didn’t get her.
He was like, he was being flirtatious.
It’s like, jeez, a lady, like…
So your pushing is like Mexican Mac and cheese on him or whatever it was?
Amy at the end of this itself who writes a book about it.
So obviously she’s caching into it.
So it all seems like that was kind of a big theme for me.
Was it the fame aspect?
The other thing that kind of hit home for me was now the people that are actually victims,
the Hillary handies, the Tommy O’Hara’s, the desi callings of the world,
are, don’t have a voice because the people that are in want the voice get the most attention.
So kind of sucks for those people, but…
Yeah, I was tough for Nick when he said,
well, what about Hillary handy and the other guy?
And they’re like, oh, they’re both suicidal alcoholics now.
So they’re not gonna be real.
Not gonna be real.
Under a live on the stand.
So yeah, that’s not a safe bet because it seemed like that was the easy way out.
I did like how they weave, how she weaved those two characters into it, where
we had kind of heard about them, but mostly, oh, she had this weird boyfriend
or this friend who was a stalker, used to stalk her and dressed up like her.
Couple red herrings that actually were not red herring because they’re important to the story.
Yeah, exactly.
And they just seemed like something to say in there,
but then they came back to be actually important to showing who Amy was.
So yeah, that’s a really, really good job with that.
But in your fame thing, you also forgot Nick who also tried to write his own story,
but then Amy made him burn it or die.
Oh, right, I forgot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, his was more of a truth telling thing, but he was, I guess,
oh, yeah, he wanted the, he wanted to, yeah, it wasn’t like, he wanted to get started.
He basically missed the devil.
I need someone, I need someone to believe me.
So yeah, that’s fair.
My first stock up is Amelia Bedelia.
Are you familiar with that piece of intellectual property?
Come on.
It’s a children’s book about a maid, Amelia Bedelia,
and it’s a series of books, but she always tough name from her parents.
Yeah, she takes everything literally.
So she’s a maid for this family, but they’d say go change the clothes or something like that,
talking about the laundry.
And she would like physically change one pair of clothes to another pair of clothes.
She was an idiot, you know, she’s AI.
No, I just remember there was a baseball book too,
and they were doing all the baseball pun things.
Who’s on first?
They’d say like tag him and she’d grab a tag and put it on him.
I guess that’s probably hilarious when you’re young, but go on.
My point being, Amelia Bedelia was, you know, it’s supposed to be fun loving,
and people like her at the end because she makes good food,
which is, okay, just once again, teachers do that.
That’s the moral of the story.
People say, yeah, it’s weird.
But you’re like cooking.
I took it when I was a kid, it was like, wow, this woman is pretty dumb, you know.
These aren’t hard to understand.
And it was always like, oh, Amelia, you didn’t get it right.
So it’s a stock up because if Amy’s parents had written Amelia Bedelia,
instead of amazing Amy, I don’t think we would have been here.
You know, it’s a little bit of a counterfactual.
Because her parents were so messed up on their own right,
that they decided to totally mess up their own child
by creating a character of her that was the idealistic perfect version of her,
where if she decided to not play an instrument,
that character decided to pick up the instrument.
And if real Amy decided, like, couldn’t make the varsity volleyball team,
amazing Amy did make the varsity volleyball team,
or whatever the case is.
It’s just such a, it’s an easy way to really mess your kid up.
And I think, you know, as a parent,
my goal, besides obviously keeping it good safe,
is like, just don’t screw them up.
You know, it doesn’t matter how many times you take them to like,
tennis lesson or something like that,
they’re not going to become a tennis pro.
Like, that’s just not how it’s going to be.
But you sure can mess them up pretty easily by doing things like Amy’s parents did.
So I don’t think she would have been this psychotic,
murderous that she was if they had just not done any of that.
And that also is like her trust fund thing when she said,
Oh, I have to give my parents that money.
That’s like, it’s their money at the end of the day.
It’s like, no, they put it in a trust fund for you.
They used you to create this character.
You know, you have some stake in their, you know,
you have some stake in their fortune.
And if they mismanaged their piece, that’s on them.
Like don’t, don’t come knocking.
You know, figure out a way to make another amazing Amy novel
or figure out something else to write.
If they’re such world-renowned psychologists or river cases
and have written all these books,
and their chosen books, I read a lot of chosen books.
They’re, most of them are terrible.
You can very easily just write another amazing Amy book
but do it for a different generation,
put iPads in it, whatever the case is.
Well, yeah, I had parents as a stock down,
so similar vibes.
I will defend Amy’s parents a little bit here in that.
They did set her up with a good upbringing and a big trust fund.
Yeah, I mean, it does sound that bad.
I mean, she had a pretty good life.
But as a child, she was always getting compared to amazing Amy.
Oh, you’re amazing Amy.
And so she felt like, oh, I have to be this character.
Yeah, LeBron James kid is named LeBron Jr.
Yeah.
What do you guys like?
It’s like, yeah.
Grow up.
And you’re in the NBA.
Yeah, exactly.
You’re getting a lot of things handed to that other people didn’t have.
I mean, look at Hollywood parents,
like young actors, they’re actually getting fucked
when they’re doing all the work and then
all their money’s taken by their parents.
Her parents at least, you know, I’m serious.
They obviously fucked her up in years.
Yeah, just don’t have her read the books and don’t present her as the Amy.
Or they should just change the name, really.
She just had her name.
She just they should have taken the story from her,
but use a different name.
Yeah, I mean, that’s for her.
Save it.
That’s pretty simple.
Yeah, amazing Amelia Bidelia.
Or they should have called her something different.
You know, or her name is Amy.
We’re going to call you Amelia Bidelia.
You know, that’s your real first name now.
But her being a psychopath is more to do with her
than it is to do with her parents in my opinion.
I will say Nick’s parents.
I don’t remember Nick’s dads.
In the movie, but I’ll be great to be cast as him is just the guy that only says
fucking bitch.
The whole movie is just, he just can’t,
would pop up and just say fucking bitch.
And then Nick would say that to other people because of him.
And I was like, yeah, that’s a weird, we’re tough dad to have.
Nick would have some like crazy serial killer type moments.
He’s like, fucking bitch.
Fucking bitch.
Yeah, okay, slow down, dude.
Yeah, kind of, kind of weird.
Yeah, so what else do you have for stock up?
Man and awareness rating stock up.
Oh.
So in Madden football for those unaware,
they would assign awareness ratings, which is kind of weird.
Like the left guard would have a awareness rating of 90,
which is mean he’d block the person in front of them.
But then like a bad one would have a awareness rating of 40,
until they just wouldn’t block the person.
Like it didn’t really make any sense why they’re,
they’re need for that.
But Nick’s awareness rating in Madden is like 15 out of 100.
It’s pretty tough here.
He’s just kind of oblivious of everything that’s going around.
You’re saying during post-Aime getting quote unquote,
just like 100% of the time.
Just overall.
Always.
Yeah, awareness rating permanently.
It doesn’t go up or down.
It might go down if anything.
But he’s just like doesn’t know what’s going on with Amy at any point
than the relationship it seems like.
He’s kind of like, oh, she’s drugging me, I guess.
Oh, she poisoned herself, I guess?
Oh, she has other friends.
It’s like, how do you not know?
I mean, you could show people to stumble on by accident
to one of these things.
You know, let alone.
Wouldn’t it be like one time when you was wake up and you’re like,
oh, my god, I just feel like I just got completely knocked out.
And that drink last night was really weird.
I just immediately passed out after drinking it.
Wouldn’t you like to have like some sort of light bulb
or you just be like, well, whatever.
Yeah, especially after they’re married
and the relationship is on the rocks.
Yeah, it is weird because he was at the bar, you know, all day.
Granted, it’s a bar, it doesn’t open until noon.
You know, he even says like, I didn’t have a,
didn’t set myself to an alarm clock.
I don’t wake up at all, different hours.
So when you’re waking up at 9 a.m.
and you don’t go to work until noon,
you and Amy are in the house together like,
what’s going on?
Like you having a conversation?
Because it sure doesn’t seem like,
granted, I know I understand that Amy was trying
to create this whole backstory narrative
that like she was hiding her friendship
from the woman down the street.
But he’s so oblivious to his surroundings
and at no point was she able to like see her
and like get a glower from her or something
because of all the stuff Amy had put in her hair?
Yeah, one point of been like, I talked to her wife,
whatever, whatever, you know,
and then though it was funny to me was that,
is he Anakin Skywalker?
People are like, yeah, he hates the beach, obviously.
I’m like, who would have nobody knows this guy at all?
Why does everyone know he hates the beach?
That’s such a weird–
Yeah, how do the random people from town know
that he doesn’t go to the beach?
Yeah, think about anyone in your whole life
that anyone you’ve ever met.
Have you ever met anyone that’s like,
oh, I don’t go to the beach, I hate the beach.
Well, probably, yeah, but I wouldn’t remember it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that’s my whole thing is like,
you might hate the beach, but like,
is that something the people would be like,
oh, he would never go to the beach.
Yeah, what?
It’s like, they–
Do you know that he’s Skywalker?
Do you know that in the Dianne?
He says he was at the beach or, nope,
Nick Dumb was definitely not at the beach.
He hates it.
Unless people go into the bar and like, that’s his thing,
he just goes, I hate the beach.
He’s like, all right, cool.
My next stock up was honest relationships stock up to those.
So Amy spends the beginning of her relationship with Nick
pretending to be like the person that she thinks he wants,
which she refers to as a cool girl.
And one who doesn’t mind if he like,
skips on drinks with her friends and fallacious upon request.
But then once their marriage starts,
she reveals her true self.
One who would indeed be mad if he skips drinks with her friends
and does not graciously provide one sided sexual pleasures
upon request.
But, you know, and I think there is, well,
obviously it’s a problem for an honest, you know,
having an honest relationship that’s helpful.
And I think there is obviously,
we can all understand this to some degree,
because when you first start dating someone,
you do put on your, you know, your best face.
You put on your, you put on your best self,
shower regularly.
You know, that’s, that’s something that I would do.
No, but, you know, you try to be the person that they want,
you know, and the person that they want you to be.
And maybe you hide some of your, like, little flaws
in the room of the cases, I don’t know, I can’t think,
well, I guess, this,
wife could be mad at me, but when we started dating,
I think she contemplated herself for like two straight weeks,
was just, like, I will not, I will not poop in front of you, you know?
It’s like, at one point she told me to go walk the dog,
and I was like, why?
And it does, that’s so weird,
she just told me to go walk the dog.
She was like, I have to use the bathroom.
I was like, you can go to the bathroom, it’s not, this is, this is not a turn off.
This is just a bodily function that everyone, that everyone needs to do.
But, you know, that’s, you know, the people do things to make people
want to love them as most as humanly possible.
The one thing they don’t do then is get pissed at that person
for not loving the real version of themself that they hid for the entire time,
and then also being mad at them for being stupid enough
to think that the person they presented originally
was not the person that they are.
It’s like, how could you be so dumb to think
that I’d be cool with you not getting drinks with my friends?
Like, obviously, that was a show because I was just trying to put on my best face.
Well, I assume the divorce rate so high is because this happens probably a good amount now,
wouldn’t you say?
No, I don’t think, I don’t think that’s necessary.
I don’t think that specifically is it because
maybe with people who get married super quickly or those crazy people who don’t live together
before they get married, which is wild to me because,
you know, although you’re in a romantic relationship, you are also roommates.
So you got to, there’s a thing about keeping a house together
or over the cases that matters.
You know, what if someone just upper decked every single time, in fact, to the poop stuff?
It’d be like, wow, I can’t believe we are now married and I didn’t realize you don’t know
which part of the toilet to poop in. So, yeah, I could see that being a problem.
I will say too, but with Amy, one of my hates was that she’s like, yeah,
I’m supposed to be this perfect person. Which does suck. I feel like women have a much harder
than the dating world of having to be flawless. But then she’s like, I don’t want to do
these things. Be the cool girl and eat pizza on the couch and watch TV. But then she goes off
in hiding and she starts eating unhealthy and watching TV all day.
I’m like, so you’re just doing something you’re complaining about.
Yeah, you’re like, you’re like saying that’s so hard to do things.
She’s like, I want to read Jane Austen and she’s like reading trash books. I’m like,
so you’re just doing all the things you said that you hate that he,
like, I have to do it, put on airs and do.
Yeah, I mean, it’s just huge liar.
So, yeah. Some of her points I thought were extremely valid.
About, yeah, especially about the, you know, the roles women play in these relationships.
And like, what’s asked of them.
But then other stuff like the Jane Austen stuff, sort of the case was, it’s like, you can just,
you can do that, you know.
At some point you have to say, I’m going to be me because I can’t not be me.
So, if that’s going to, you know, turn this person off, then we probably weren’t meant to be together.
Anyways, so, yeah, so honest relationships, talk to your loved ones people.
Did you have any other stockups?
I just want a quick one watching the wire stock up.
Oh, that’s always a stock up.
Yeah, Nick Dunn is obviously a fan of the wire.
I mean, honestly, I think he’s character is very, very similar to Jodie McNulty,
Bit of a narcissist, Bit of an alcoholic, Bit of a blender.
Yeah.
He also picked up some tips, the burner phone, you know.
And he’s also playing criminal, criminal, like psychologist with his wife,
being like, I know she’ll like, if I wear this watch and this tie that she got me,
which is, to be fair, that’s the book, I think, I don’t remember this in the movie,
but in the book, you start to see, oh, Nick’s also an absolute psychopath also.
Like all the things he, he’s thinking and things like that.
It’s like, oh, he’s a crazy person.
So, yeah, the only thing they do in the movie from…
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
…was have, like, they had that sign that was like, oh, I love you,
and they’d like touch their face or whatever.
It was like, I’m always telling the truth or whatever the case is.
And they did that in the movie, but it just felt weird.
It felt like the guy who played Mad Eye Moody, the fake Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter movies,
who has the weird tongue thing.
Yeah, the weird tongue take is like,
*clap*
It’s like, that, why is that there?
Who put that there?
Yeah, so, I don’t think I liked that part of the movie very much.
My other stock up, or my last one, I guess besides Halath, no fury, like a woman’s gorned, you know.
That’s, that’s obvious.
That one’s too easy.
But, actually, no, I got to, I guess.
One is having a job stock up.
It’s another counterfactual, but I don’t think Amy would have the time to meticulously frame Nick
for her murder.
Had she just had a job, you know.
They’d be stuck in the standard doll drums of a 9 to 5 at the end of the day, and just,
you know, want to get some take out and watch Trashy TV.
Well, she wouldn’t want to watch Trashy TV.
She’d want to watch Broadchurch.
No, not Broadchurch.
Bridget, Bridget didn’t.
What’s the one, what’s the one on PBS that people really like about the,
The history of World War II presented by Tom Hanks?
No, but I did try to watch that.
I know.
It’s only on like, it’s on like Pluto or 2B or something, right?
I’m not, it’s on Hulu, yeah.
Oh, it’s on Hulu?
Oh, okay, yeah.
I definitely, I didn’t realize that.
I didn’t realize Russia was, like, legit allies, or not, uh,
With Germany?
Yeah, I didn’t realize that for that long.
I didn’t, I thought they were like, whatever, we’re fine.
I didn’t realize they were, uh, little, little allies.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Hitler was like, okay, I’m gonna go into Poland on this side.
You go into Poland on that side.
Yeah, I didn’t realize it.
Let’s just absolutely smash their faces in.
Yeah, okay.
Tom, Tom, David Poland.
But anyways.
Yeah, if I mean if Hitler had never turned around.
Our guys on that, by the way, too.
Okay.
Hardcore history guy.
Oh, Dan Carlin?
Yeah, they show like a one clip of them talking.
I was like, all right, I’m blocked in now.
And then they don’t show them for the next, like, episode five again.
I’m like, well, well, where’s Dan Carlin presenting?
I don’t need anyone else tell me about this shit.
I don’t know if Dan he Carlin.
Yeah.
Yeah, if Hitler probably didn’t do Operation Barbarossa,
which was the invasion of the Soviet Union,
we, you know, they probably would have been able to hold on
to Fortress Europa for a long time.
Oh, yeah.
For sure.
I know.
What’s that?
Whatever.
It’s the PBS show about the help in the house and people love it.
But English thing, whatever.
But yeah, so if she just had a job, I know it’s like hard.
Obviously she’s a writer and she’s now in Missouri,
or remember the cases.
So it’s hard to find a job.
But if you’re a writer, just write, like, don’t write her’s right,
that’s pretty much what Gillian Flindey,
that, you know, her character in this is pretty much Nick
because she was fired by Entertainment Weekly, I want to say.
I think she was fired by Entertainment Weekly during the recession
and decided to write a book and wrote this book.
So it’s like, yeah, like, put your powers to good use.
I guess Amy didn’t put her powers to good use.
She just has some psychotic powers.
Yeah, we’ve had a few of these books where it’s been like struggling artists
or artists that are like couldn’t, I couldn’t do it because you made me
whatever whatever it’s like, it’s art, you’re an artist.
Yeah, just do that.
Just do that.
You know people do that for fun when they get home for four to five hours.
You know what I mean?
Like it’s not a, it’s nothing that’s really holding.
It’d be different if it’s like, you know,
I want to play golf at the time.
It’s like, well, I can only play during the day and I work during the day.
So I really can’t go play golf.
I can go paint a picture at any time today.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, they invented electricity.
We got it.
You’re good.
But my last stock up was stock up to being an absentee father.
Ultimately, Nick has to go back with Amy and live with her
and pretend their marriage is what it is because she pulls this
her last straw card, which is she’s pregnant.
She like got ahold of his semen, got it and disseminated in her
and now they’re having a baby.
And that’s it, right?
That’s the whole thing.
It’s like, okay, now we’re having a baby.
He’s like, I can’t leave this baby.
So I have to put up with her.
It’s like, oh, no, no, no, you don’t understand.
You can definitely leave that baby.
You do not have to be in that child’s life.
I know it’s super messed up and you,
I appreciate that you want to be a father to this child.
But you’re with a absolute psychopath
who’s framed you in her murder that then she came back on it.
And is now like tried to frame you in a attempted murder
with a vomit thing and is now basically forced you into
fatherhood with her and who knows what she’s going to do.
You know, any one day she could do something crazy.
And it’s not going to get easier when you have a kid involved.
I can guarantee that.
So why not just say I’m out, right?
I mean, she’s been slipping on drugs a little bit this whole time.
Maybe a little what’s good for the goose,
so good for the gander, give her a little abortion pill in there, no?
Anyways.
Oh, yeah, no, that’s fair.
There’s nothing this child should not be brought into this one.
I mean, the child could be,
is probably going to be abused psychologically by me as well, you know?
So I do want to sequel with the child.
I kind of want to see looked up a psychopath is growing up.
It’s like what call the call from the good son.
That’s who it is.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, but I’m just saying he didn’t have to be there.
It didn’t.
Yeah, it wasn’t enough for me to do the ending was kind of some of my hates.
I was like, so I just leave.
I mean, I think that’s why they painted him as like dependent.
He’s like, oh, I have to be with her because we’re the only people
that can be together.
Oh, yeah, we’re going to get more to Nick.
Yes, I got issues there.
What about stock down?
Being poor stock down.
I don’t know if this is a stock down before, but being poor sucks for obvious reasons,
but I think this book definitively states that getting away with murder is
way easier than poor for like 10 days.
I mean, she’s just off doing her own thing, right?
Basically being the person that she says she doesn’t want to be because it’s, you know,
too hard watching TV, lounging out, being by the pool day.
But she gets her money stolen.
And instead of being like, well, this is the real world time to like figure things out.
Yeah, time to get a job.
I’m going to have to call other people and you know, and call Desi to come save me.
It’s like, oh, like that seems like you’re, like you, you’re like, oh, I have everything planned,
and everything mapped out.
It’s like, so you couldn’t handle being poor for 10 days.
So you could think of every impossible, magical angle.
You could literally plan a, replan and plan a murder multiple times over,
but you couldn’t figure out how to survive for 10 days.
Well, to be fair, she was planning on killing herself original.
True, but like if you’re, I think you’re that smart and that better than everyone,
wouldn’t you be able to be like, but I guess it goes back to getting a job,
but would you be able to get a job or write a book or do something that?
Yeah, I think really she’s just a silver spoon, baby, right?
She’s just used to that lifestyle, had it all, which Nick complains about to be like,
oh, I had to work so hard and you know, you had 10,000.
Nick’s a nice little bitch.
But yeah, so, you know, there was some validity of that where she just like,
hasn’t ever had Dylan and Sarah like pull herself up by her bootstraps.
So yeah, that’s true.
My first lockdown was mixing family and business,
stocked down.
So using the last of your wife’s trust fund to open a bar with your sister,
it’s just not, it’s not a great way to go about things.
One, it’s the last of your money, you know, your wife’s money for sure.
It’s a bar in a rundown town that isn’t going to be getting back on its feet,
you know, there’s a delapidated mall and like, it was a place where they broke blue books or something
like that, but now those aren’t a thing anymore.
It just, it seems he treats this as like this was a great business opportunity where
it seems more like prestige worldwide type of business opportunity.
Not going to work.
And Margot took a second mortgage or something on her house to pay for Nick’s legal fees.
So why didn’t she do that to open the bar?
If you guys are so passionate about this business opportunity and you think it’s going to make money,
why go crawling to your wife for the last of her trust fund instead of saying, hey, Margot,
like, we’re going to do this.
Let’s put a second mortgage in your house.
I believe we believe in this business model.
And Margot also, she was an investment, she was in investment banking.
She was seemingly an investment banker and then the market crashed and now
she’s poor.
So I’m not sure about her business acumen either.
It seems like she had a decent opportunity there to make some money and squirrel some away.
So to not have any money now, to put down for a bar, I guess the only thing she could do is buy
a house in her original hometown, which I assume houses don’t go for a lot, but yeah,
it’s just, I didn’t like the the taking the trust fund money to this, which is like the last
of your money. The pair has already squeezed everything out of it and now you’re coming in for the
last little bit to buy a bar.
I maybe his in next fantasy was like, all right, well, me and the wife will go and run this bar
and then we’ll be able to like work on our writing career as is like, all we’re doing it and we’ll,
I mean, it’s a bar. I mean, we’re all like the most famous writers at bars all day, drinking,
you know, writing.
So it seems to me like it’s not the worst.
Someone’s going to come up with some idea, right?
And she kept on saying it’s both of our money. So he’s like, all right, let’s let’s fuck around.
Let’s get it like, let’s invest in something here if we’re going to stay here.
Yeah, it’s not a terrible idea.
I hate actually trying to then go and sit there and write a novel, but they would go in and
just sit and drink, you know, it’s like Patty’s pup.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, he was happy about it, right?
Well, yeah, definitely.
He makes you happy.
He, I mean, he’s, Nick was live in the best life.
He’s sitting at a bar that his wife owns drink and in the movie too, I watched like the first
15 minutes of it.
I will finish it, but I watch like the first 15 minutes of it.
But he goes in and it’s been half like this is not in the book, but it makes a lot of sense for
the characters.
And he sits down with go and they’re having a they’re having blantons, which is extremely expensive.
The wall of the bar is on top.
Yeah, the one with the horse on top.
There are blantons at like eight in the morning.
So it’s not even, you’re not drinking the swill.
You’re drinking the top top tier stuff, which I understand.
You’re barbed, but at the same time it’s not, you’re not making him money hand over a fist here.
It’s your wife’s bar really.
And you’re sitting there at an M. Drink of beers and drink of blantons as opposed to, I don’t know,
doing whatever.
But yeah, if she, if she’s like, we need to say this money so I can do XYZ fine.
But if we’re not having any ideas thrown out here, I don’t, I don’t hate it.
Let’s get some, let’s get him put time money to make money.
Yeah, yeah, come on.
This is the capitalism 101.
I’m like invested in an index fund.
Yeah, you know, what are we doing here, kid?
He’s putting it into something that’s real bar and drinking are both real again.
How are you going to get some any inspired?
Who is, you know, one famous Arthur?
I can’t think of the guy that was an alcohol.
Anyway, anyway, what do you, that, he’s going to become having way with a, with a drinking kid.
Well, yeah, you also like go wrestle at bears and fight in this banish civil war
and like do other stuff that’s interesting, not sitting up on the top.
Can you grow up without a silver spoon in his mouth?
You don’t know what it’s like.
My last talk down is Nick Dunn and I’m just going to say it.
You know, Amy is, is actually psychotic, but Nick is a total dick, an absolute total dick.
Journal version of him or real, like his own real version of it.
Well, I also have questions about that.
We’ll talk about this as I’m going through it because I’m not sure, well, I guess we
can address this here because it’s going to be pertinent to the rest, but how
truthful was some parts of a journal?
Is the whole journal bullshit or is some of it real because it seemed like some of it
tied back to things that would align with Nick’s personality?
Yeah, I think every single thing was written in the worst possible lights.
So while some of the stuff may be real, I think she’s obviously writing it three years later,
or seven years later, whatever the date, like she wrote it like two or three months ago for
stuff that happened.
So if you’re looking back at me, like this guy sucks now, every single part of the story now
that was maybe good is now back.
You’re just like, oh, let me change these things to make it more reflective of this narrative.
So I think while I think Nick is like emotionally detached and probably not a very good communicator
and not a lot of things, I don’t think he’s an abuser, like physical abuser, like he’s obviously
painted it.
And I don’t think he’s money-hungry, which I think is obviously, I think there’s certain things that are
like the him buying a bunch of it.
I’m having a golfer.
Yeah, I get him buying a bunch of suits and throwing them in the corner.
I don’t think that I actually think that one was one, then I was wondering.
Okay.
I mean, that doesn’t fit his character really at all.
So it’s like, why would that all of a sudden happen?
Unless she’s trying to paint him as someone that wants money and wants, you know, it doesn’t
really make sense.
That’s fair.
But he’s still a total asshole and it’ll get to the things that must be true.
One of them being the whole treasure hunt thing.
So every anniversary Amy puts together an elaborate treasure hunt where at the end of
it he’s going to find something that aligns with whatever the gift category is for that
anniversary.
Like paper would forget a little, but I have no idea.
I’m not into the stuff.
I got no idea.
But what I am into is elaborate treasure hunts.
I mean, who doesn’t like an elaborate treasure hunt?
We got the goonies, Raiders the Lost Ark, the mummy, National Treasure, National Treasure
Come on people.
Like, these are…
I loved all of those movies and the idea of a treasure hunt is awesome to me.
If someone’s going to put that together, people pay for this stuff.
People pay for people to put these together for them.
We were in high school, meeting my couple of my buddies.
We had some friends and they put together a treasure hunt for us.
It was wonderful.
It was wonderful.
It took us to all of our favorite spots around town, including chilies where there was
nachos waiting for us.
Wonderful.
Yeah.
There was…
These treasure hunts are the ancient chilies, you know, my man.
We had…
One of them took us to a convenience store we used to go to and they had a richie’s Italian
ice for us.
Great.
Great stuff.
Wow.
Yeah.
It’s really nice.
Yeah.
So an elaborate treasure hunt is great.
And, you know, Nick and Go, and this is definitely true because it comes from Nick’s
perspective because it’s like, you know, the day of the first morning, Nick and Go sitting
at the bar drinking and they’re just complaining about Amy’s upcoming anniversary treasure
hunt.
It’s like she’s putting so much effort into putting this treasure hunt together for you.
Like, you have literally nothing going on with your life.
Shouldn’t you be excited about this?
And yeah, I get it.
The clues are kind of a weird test to see if Nick remembers my new details of, you know,
things that happened to them in the past and it’s probably set up for him to fail and feel
bad that he doesn’t remember, but it’s still a treasure hunt at the end of the day.
So…
I think, yeah, I think you’re thinking of a fun treasure hunt where there’s something in
the end that’s good.
His…
I think the treasure hunt he was getting where, like, taking the SATs or something.
You know, it was like…
No, not at all.
This is grueling and then at the end you get upset when I get an answer wrong.
Yeah, but it was like…
What the hell?
It was like, take me is like the place where I go when I feel blue and it was the little
mermaid statue in Central Park or something like that.
And she was like, oh, I told you that all the time.
I told you that all the time that that’s where I used to go when I was sad.
Like, I’d go to that and he was like, I don’t remember.
So he probably should do a little bit more remembering.
And if you made this fun throughout the year, you know, he was like, oh, okay, like she’s
putting stuff there.
You know, you can put on a happy face and go enjoy a treasure hunt.
It’s also not like…
If you got there and he didn’t get it or he was had issues with the clues, you’d give him
hints and they’d eventually go there.
And then they’d be like, oh, okay.
Here we are.
Nice.
Cool.
I got there.
I think I’m on his side on some of those.
I think if it’d be like asking someone like, all right, here’s the treasure hunt.
What was like my favorite player in college and what school did they go to?
What number was it?
And they were like, Simon, what do I care about this?
Exactly.
What number is it, good?
You don’t know.
You don’t know about anything about me.
Yeah.
But that’s what it seemed like.
It was just like a very personal test rather than like a…
It was a how well do you know me test?
But it is great.
It’s actually great that the final treasure hunt, which is the fifth anniversary when they’re
seeing throughout this story, it’s easy enough for Nick to figure out, but it’s not clear
to him until the end of it that it’s all the places he had used to cheat on Amy and then
you know, it ends at the shed with all the stuff that he was like, I never bought all this
stuff and it’s just all there.
So it kind of all hits him at once as to…
Oh, sure.
It was kind of like the awareness thing.
Yeah.
And she’s able to track him to all these different places and he hasn’t noticed at all one
time that she’s following him to all these places.
Like, get some awareness one time for me.
Yeah, how many cars on the street are your dad’s run down?
Like not many.
So…
Yeah.
So the thousand dollar suits, I didn’t know about that, but if that’s, you know, we’ll
say that that’s probably not true.
Fine.
Okay.
I’m okay with that.
But the pre-nut thing, because the pre-nut thing seemed pretty real to me.
He goes out with his buddies after they all get fired in one of the cases.
He goes home drunk after bar hopping and they go to the strip clubs and he’s crying over
the fact that they have this pre-nut between them, even though Amy says it’s our money.
And he’s using this whole time when he’s on this night out, he’s using her credit card that,
you know, that, or his credit card that Amy pays for, from her, trust fund, to get lap dances?
Like, what are we talking about here?
Is that real or is that fake?
Yeah, I think all of that.
I think anything that’s money involved, because whenever we were in his head, he doesn’t
really seem to care about money, like, money is not never like, and like, ah, I was struggling
all these things.
He never really talks about money.
So I assumed anything that was money involved was painted in order to show that he
killed over money.
Oh, like, the money is a big thing for him.
Okay.
That’s so, I just assumed it.
I was reading the same way when the first head, I was like, I don’t really get why I remember
Amy being a bad character in this.
She doesn’t seem that villainous here.
But I think all of that’s painted in that way for that direction because obviously, I think
the bad part about him is that he doesn’t really care and then he cheats on his work.
I mean, that’s the main two things.
No, there’s one way worse.
All right.
So you can throw out everything else.
Yeah.
I’m just going to throw out everything else.
The treasure on stuff because I’m going to stand behind that.
Okay.
But my final straw with him and for me, honestly, this is worse than the cheating and
would one thousand percent lead me down the rabbit hole framing my face significant other
for murder.
It’s the eggs Benedict situation.
The eggs Benedict situation.
I don’t remember this.
I said go on.
Amy makes Nick a beautiful eggs Benedict for breakfast and he decides when breakfast is ready.
It’s like, hey, breakfast is ready.
Let’s go.
He gets a phone call from go is like, I got to take this.
What?
It’s eggs Benedict.
It has a half life of 90 seconds.
You know, the poached egg is cooling by the second.
The holiday sauce congealing.
It’s already starting congee congee.
You can geal the second it hits the plate.
It’s hot food people.
We do not take phone calls when hot breakfast food is ready.
It’s not like, I mean, you can just whip up a holiday sauce.
You know, I understand if it was some over easy egg sitting on a plate and it’s like, okay,
I got to take a phone call.
Whatever.
I’ll give this one to the dog and I’ll make you another one.
This is eggs Benedict.
She went she, she toasted that English muffin.
There’s a little slice of ham on there that’s perfectly browned.
You know, we got holiday salt.
I like, I really don’t, the second he picked up that phone, I don’t care that the phone
call from go was him telling, it was her telling him that his mother had cancer.
I don’t care about that aspect of it.
Just the fact that he picked up the phone is absolute no non-starter.
I’m going to plan my own fake murder and frame you for it.
I didn’t realize I’d spend an egg tattooed such a short shelf life.
I didn’t know I wasn’t aware of that.
Have you been to diner and your food in ready in the window, but they don’t bring it out
to you and it’s eggs Benedict’s?
Yeah.
The top of the holiday sauce is just like American cheese if it has been left out too long,
you know what I mean?
I mean a diner I’d never order.
Maybe a nice bread order.
I’d never order eggs Benedict.
Come on get a diner.
We talk when we talk about it here.
Yeah.
I think diners go like the also special care.
You’re going high for gluten.
No, I usually don’t, I don’t get it anyway.
Mostly because it’s pretty decadent for me.
But yeah, if I was at a fancy place for sure, but yeah, I’m with you.
I get like the hungry man, give me actually the place I get is called the Cape Cotter.
It’s two eggs, how you like them.
Meat, your choice of meat and a grilled corn muffin.
Oh God, that sounds so good.
A grilled corn muffin is literally mine.
Yeah, that’s for last because I know that you’d be.
That’s amazing.
Damn, I’m pumped up right now.
God.
Also go is kind of a piece of shit too.
She doesn’t like it.
I was going to say it’s more than he’s banging his sister that you’d be upset about,
right?
Look at a terrible name is go.
Margo is a great name.
I love the name Margo.
Yeah.
Oh, good.
I kept it mean like, is this like a French fucking GOGH or some bullshit?
Like what it like bow, you know, bows like B-A-U-E-X or something?
I think so.
Is that her name?
Because that was in the audio book, obviously.
Yeah.
And then I was like her name is Margo.
Like, what a terrible, how about like Marg or something better.
Margarita would be better than go.
Go is such a terrible nickname.
I’m so upset about that mostly.
Yeah, but go she doesn’t like Amy, but she takes her money to open a bar just that she can
sit in the bar and shit on Amy the whole time.
You know, she’s mixed.
Yeah, that’s a great one.
She’s mixed twin and they obviously have a close relationship.
Bang in each other.
But she couldn’t pull together the nerve to tell him not to marry Amy.
The whole, it says, oh, they never really got along and go would always say these things
about Amy kind of like beating around the bush that she didn’t like her.
But it’s your twin brother and you never flat out said, hey, I need you.
I need to let you know that I do not think this is a good person for you and you should not
marry this person.
The whole thing is post partially goes fault.
So her being holier than that and telling Nick what he should and shouldn’t be saying
and that he’s such an idiot.
Like don’t cheat on your wife.
Like chill out.
Agreed.
No, there’s no chance for you.
I just didn’t like when they asked him, but Amy’s blood type.
Like, oh, you know what Amy’s blood type is?
He’s like, no, I don’t.
You don’t know Amy’s blood type.
That’s ridiculous.
We’ve on this part, very part, we’ve talked about this before and I have a theory that blood
types fake.
I don’t think it’s real.
I still don’t believe it.
Who is the first person to ever figure it out when you’re like transferring blood?
Well, some of them just kill you if you transfer blood.
I don’t know.
Jonas Salk, I have no idea.
Okay, that’s fake.
It’s all made up by the big blood.
The Red Cross.
I don’t know my blood type, honestly.
So, yeah.
I don’t know either.
I have blood type.
I don’t know my always phone number.
I don’t definitely don’t know if I can blood type.
Classic.
All right, we’re back.
Oh, it’s ridiculous.
Maybe we’re, I was reading this and I’m like, am I Nick Dunn at times?
Oh, I was like, am I Amy?
That’s why our relationship works, right here, is it?
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Did you have a favorite scene?
I just liked when the real voice of Amy came out.
I was like, oh shit, that was the best part to me.
When she just started shitting on people, she began the real villain.
I was like, oh damn, alright, I like her now.
She’s like, I’m not going around shaving my vagina for you.
It’s awesome.
Wait, what?
That was what you got from that?
That’s what she said.
Yeah, she was like waxing.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, anybody who’s a picture.
Oh, I got that’s the one.
I was like, yeah, when she started talking down to people and wanting to kill people
and all this stuff, you’re like, yeah, the vagina part.
Well, that was the first thing she says in part two.
Okay.
And she said, they’re what?
They’re cool, like, how I’m not like, I’m not the cool girl.
There was a part in the beginning of that book where she’s describing Nick.
She’s like, you know, what’s the thing about Nick is, he’s just such a caring, nice gentleman,
like, really good person.
Huge dick.
Yeah.
And I was like, I was like, wait, what?
I had her a wine at a few times and I was like, is that like messed up?
Because it was just so weird in context.
I was picturing Gillian Flynn in her office, like with the pencil and just like writing like
Nick, all these nice things about Nick and then like stopping for a second at the keyboard,
tapping the eraser to your mouth and then be like, oh, aha moment.
Huge dick.
Notting, being like done for the day.
I didn’t understand the character until that.
Then I said, got it.
That check checks out to me.
So if it was like, never mind, I’m not like Nick done.
Never mind.
Check it out.
Never if it ever seemed as the turn part two here.
Yeah, even though I knew it was coming, I still didn’t know it was coming.
You know, one of those things.
So I liked it.
Yeah.
I related, but unrelated and I kind of talked about it before, but when Nick realizes that
she’s been messing with him, you know, that she’s definitely not gone, which I think is
right before that.
It’s like he finds the clubs and realizes it’s more than golf clubs, but whatever.
He finds all that stuff and then realizes and then I think that’s the end of part one.
And then part two goes into like, hey, I’m Amy.
Haven’t been waxed yet.
Got it.
Um, character.
There’s not many characters in this.
Um, did you have a favorite one?
I think I pay tribute to, uh, to Desi calling.
I think we’re getting the view of him from Amy.
And so we’re getting the pain of the worst possible.
But like, if you think about him as a character, he comes and saves her.
And like does all these romantic gestures and doing all these things and is like, and
then she’s like, he won’t get out of my hair.
I’m like, but like he came and saved you, you know, like, and he’s also putting himself out
there.
He’s going to get arrested if it ever comes to, so he’s like obviously protective of
himself.
I don’t know.
I thought it was, I just weird, but the real character is Bony.
Oh, yeah.
No, I’m, I’m, I’m a Bony fan myself, but you couldn’t be further off based with, with
Desi. He’s a psychopath just as much as Amy just in a different way.
He has a whole room of like a greenhouse of tulips because, er, favorite, and high school
and he’s made it so they can bloom year round.
He never knew he was going to see this person again.
Okay.
She’s married.
Have you seen the notebook?
This is literally the plot of the notebook.
He’s going to notebook.
I have it.
I haven’t, I mean, I haven’t.
Oh, you’re a bad old bird.
I remember that.
Not to spoil it, but he’s like, builds a whole mansion for her and she leaves his wife for
him or his, her husband for her.
Oh, so maybe he’s just watching the notebook on rerun.
Yeah, it was basically the notebook.
It was exactly the notebook.
Everyone’s like, what a romantic, because he’s Ryan Gosling.
Doesn’t imagine him as Ryan Gosling.
Now do you think he’s a man?
Oh, instead of empty age, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So there you go.
I’d, yeah, I’m down, I’m down.
I’d go into his, I’d go into his love nest.
She was like coming onto him hard, which you would think would be all he was looking for.
And he was like, I don’t know, are you sure you’re ready for this?
Yeah, he was a nice guy.
Yeah, like I said, she’s like, let’s have sex.
He’s like, I don’t know.
Like let’s take it slow.
It’s like, whoa, dude, this is like you, you just, you’ve spent years planting tulips, literally
planting the seed.
So you should, you should do something about it.
Yeah, I’m going to go with Amy, you know, it’s mine.
I like their, yeah.
I do agree with her that all the like commercials for household goods, like air fresheners show
a woman, you know, presumably a wife and mother happily sprang furniture, sprang it in
the air, taking in the fresh scent, you know, looking pleased that her husband’s going to
come home to a clean house.
It’s so true that, you know, we’ve really just live in this society where those things
are, are pillars and you can’t get away from it.
It’s, it’s bullshit.
It’s sexist.
It is, you know, so I’m with her that there is, uh,
there are asks or, or, what, things that smell good is like not for men.
No, just talking about the commercials, how it would be, that would be a commercial of
a woman with a, you know, I just thought about the fresh thing is you think about a, for
Breeze commercial, it’s never, yeah, some guy, you don’t get upset when there’s like a
commercial of like some, you know, some woman baking cookies and they’d smell them like
the fresh baked cookies and it’s a woman and you’re like, I do that.
What the hell?
You don’t get upset about that?
I’m not like, I mean, I’m not upset with you, though, I just think it’s stupid, you know,
that there’s, yeah, that there’s these, these, like, some like, we’re being very, we’re
going to lose, you know, that, that the marketing departments go, go all in on and tell people
what to do.
And I agree that, you know, it’s one thing that, and then another thing with like, oh,
where panoeos to make your legs look better?
It’s just, it’s, it’s not, I, you know, I believe I agree that it’s, it’s, it’s not easy
being a woman.
But I do think Desi is, he’s maybe crazier than Amy, uh, and I kind of wish, it sure
is her eyes, though.
I kind of wish it went the other way.
And when she gets to Desi and all this stuff goes down, he shows how he’s crazy, sure through
her eyes or whatever, but he turns into like a full buffalo bill from sounds of the lambs.
And she thinks she’s in a safe place where now she is the upper hand and instead he throws
her down a well and tells her to put the lotion on her skin, you know, that, I would love
that.
Well, then she wouldn’t be as crazy early.
Well, actually, what is interesting is too is when she gets robbed by those people,
I’m like, fuck these people.
I absolutely hate those people even though she’s doing something way, way worse than they
are.
I’m like, these people are those scum and they aren’t.
Exactly.
Yeah.
They’re opportunistic scum.
She had planned this whole thing out.
Well, I guess the biggest thing too is loyalty.
Like she was being friendly and loyal to them and then they turned her back, you know, whereas
she’s kind of screwing over someone that was turned over back on her.
So it’s a little bit more, you’re not as angry about it.
Although I guess she’s screwed all the other people.
Anyway, I like the spitball.
Yeah.
Definitely not my favorite character, Nick, like we’ve talked about.
He’s so weird at the end when she’s been back for a month and he’s getting some of the
old feelings back.
He says at one point, he’s like, oh, I live with a murderous wife who’s also super fun.
And it’s like, oh, how fun do you ask?
Well, I had lobsters flown in like we did in the old days and we had so much fun.
I chased her around the house with a lobster.
She chased me.
Then we both pretended to hide.
We made the same Annie Hall jokes at the same time.
And then he gets to like leave the room because his heart was palpitating and he thought he was
going to cry or something.
It’s like, Nick, you got issues.
Like one, not fun.
That is not.
It’s fun to do with a kid.
If you got little kids around, you pull a lot live lobster out, but you know, maybe I’m
just a loser or should they’re like have a cold dead heart.
And the wife and I running around the kitchen island attacking each other with lobsters is,
it’s not going to make my heart palpitate.
I’ve seen Annie Hall though.
That’s the question.
I have seen Annie Hall and I understand that it’s like, oh, cool.
This is a reference for the same Annie Hall jokes.
Like, okay, whatever.
The guys are also a rapist.
So what’s, what are we talking about?
We thought the Mary’s daughter.
Like, we did Mary’s daughter.
I don’t even know one of them.
Step daughter, sir.
Or no.
Half daughter.
Yeah.
No, that’s you think about Elon Musk’s dad who married his stepdaughter.
Jesus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All these good people.
Yeah.
And he married his stepdaughter when she was, she was a step, ex stepdaughter.
She was his stepdaughter from ages like four to 20.
And then, and then he broke up with her mom and then they got together when she was like
25 or something.
Yeah.
This is pretty fucked up.
That’s Elon Musk.
That’s the richest.
Well, it’s his dad.
Yeah.
But I’m sure the apple doesn’t fall too far.
Not a parent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Parents definitely fucked him up for sure.
What about love hates?
Let’s get into some love hates.
What did you love about conquer?
You already mentioned that.
I really liked Amy as a bad guy.
I think the typical trope is like, this guy is perfect person and he’s so great and then
he turns bad.
But I like seeing, this is like a great character.
I thought it was a really interesting.
I mean, that’s why like when I first saw the movie, I was like, holy shit.
I was a credible movie because you don’t really see it coming.
Yeah.
Rosemond Pike is really good, isn’t it?
Yeah.
And I have seen a couple of like women revenge movies that I don’t think are very good because
they’re like, they don’t take it to like the real, they don’t do red rising.
Like, I’m gonna fucking kill a whole population until revenge myself.
Yeah.
There’s no score start for sure.
Yeah.
Which I, this was like holy shit.
This is like psychological score starts.
It was a mix of like, you’re kind of rooting for it times too, which even though.
Yeah.
Fuck me.
Fuck, Margot.
Fuck my parents.
Fuck the whole society.
But she’s so crazy.
It’s good.
You know?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I liked her a lot.
I like the structure.
I was a big fan of the structure with like part one being next narration at the time
of the disappearance.
And then that switching off with excerpts from Amy’s diary.
It just, it was a great idea and with the twist of like her not actually being disappeared
was great.
As a reader, messes with your mind and it’s unfortunate that I knew a little bit obviously
going into it from remember a little bit of the movie.
But it messes with your mind of, you know, I’m even still I’m pulling out things from her
diary and you’re like, yeah, that’s fake.
That’s fake.
I’m like, I don’t even know, you know?
But it doesn’t do that thing where sometimes when they do it little weird twisty thing like
that, you’re like, oh, so everything else was useless and I shouldn’t even read it.
Like, I don’t feel that way.
Because sometimes, you know, we’ve read some of these terrible thrillers where it’s like
they just throw out a hundred red herring.
So it’s like, you could have saved the pages like those are all stupid.
And then part two is starting with Amy and you’re like, oh shit, you know, what the fuck?
She’s alive and now she’s a totally different person than the person that we’ve been hearing
from, like the narrator that we’ve been hearing from.
So yeah, I was a big fan of the structure of it.
Well, and you mentioned it too.
We’ve read a bunch of these thrillers and like, I have usually on these I have, you know,
20 notes being like, why the hell would they do that?
That’s so stupid.
This person doesn’t make any sense.
And this is like the characters are very, very real.
It seems like you can see personality traits and even though they’re psychotic, you can see
those things that are like, oh, I can see what they would think that.
And so that is, I didn’t have like any notes on it for most of the book because I was like
just in it.
You know, I wasn’t thinking like, that’s so stupid that I would have, you know, I mean,
it was just the whole time in it.
So.
So the, you know, the relationship is so messed up that it would be easy for you to think
how do these people even get together?
Like that doesn’t make any sense that they would be together.
I don’t get it.
But because they’re, and they’re both so crazy, but they’re both so crazy in different ways.
And when you catch him at the right time, you know, it’s like, oh, sparks will fly, but
eventually it will turn into a fire tornado, like, Dresden or Tokyo.
I don’t know if you’ve gotten to that yet in your World War II documentary, but, oh, let’s
get to hate.
What do you hate?
I mean, I wish I read the book before the movie because I think the movie, obviously the
big twist was kind of, I knew it.
And then I think the movie, you’re also kind of picturing the characters beforehand, which
made it a little tougher.
I did think from the book standpoint, I did think the ending dragged a little bit too much.
I was kind of like, that was a one time where I was like, you know, once you walks in the
door, I’d be like, where you been?
And then she’d be like, well, this is all the things that happened, like cool.
And then I’d be like, all right, see you later.
And then I just pick up and I’d be 100% gone.
I would never talk to that person again.
Like she obviously framed you.
There’s no like, there’s no like, well, let’s just justify this one.
I’d be like, cops, your job is to find the reason, like, find out if she actually did this
shit.
I don’t care.
Good luck with their lives.
I’ll see you later.
That’s the end of the story for me, but I guess he is a crazy person.
So he wanted to stay deep down.
Yeah.
It seemed a little far fetch for me that her whole plan was to do this whole thing and
then murder herself in Mexico.
She decides not to, decide not to kill herself in Mexico.
So then she’s kind of going back through it all to rewrite the narrative about Nick specifically.
I understand how she gets away with her disappearance with the whole desi thing.
Like, okay, cool.
She did find there.
But when it comes to Nick being in trouble for murdering her, it’s like all of that kind
of gets thrown out the window and her diary starts to make less sense now that they’re
both there and there are things within it.
Like once she came back, they just seems like there’s way too many holes in the story that
couldn’t be filled by Amy.
And I know she tried and, you know, some of it was able to be done, but, but the golf clubs
too.
It’s like, okay, go to any, like check his credit card to see if he’s ever played around
anywhere.
It’s like he’s never played golf.
So why would he buy Mizuno $2,000 or clubs if he’s literally never played anywhere?
It’s just like, huh?
And also, it doesn’t matter anymore because now she’s back.
So it’s like, oh, well now I have this attempted murder thing.
It’s like, okay, well that, you can easily just be a crazy person and have done that to yourself.
You know, I don’t think a jury is going to convict him.
So you don’t need to stay around because, oh, there’s vomit, there’s frozen vomit somewhere
that she decided to hide.
If she didn’t think she was being murdered at the time, she just thought she was sick,
but it felt kind of weird.
Do you think she’d just like put her vomit in a bag and freeze it?
Yeah.
I guess she’s good to say, oh, this happened recently.
I don’t know.
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.
The other thing that was like, does he shows up to the vigil or whatever, right?
Isn’t he currently kidnapped her and driving on the road with her somewhere?
Like, I didn’t know.
I was like, how is she in two places at once?
Don’t you think there’d be like multiple cameras he could use and all these other things
he could find being like, oh, he didn’t actually kidnap her?
Like, it seems like there’d be, seems like there’d be a way to find out that does he
was actually innocent.
Yeah.
But even without that, it seems like Nick could just leave, you know, like he’s at.
He could just be like, all right, well, I’m out of here.
So he wants it in a way.
Yeah.
He just wants it.
That’s the thing.
I do think I feel like the movie, again, I don’t remember.
I feel like the movie they have him trapped in a way a better way or maybe just quicker.
It’s like, oh, I have to stay like one of those things.
So I thought it was a little bit better in the movie, maybe?
I don’t know.
I can’t remember, though.
And I liked it being trapped, by the way.
That was a great ending.
I’m cool, but once you say that she was pregnant, it did go on for like a few more
chapters that I was like, all right, like, I don’t really need this.
I think I’m good.
And yeah, I guess the, you know, the ending was, you know, people had different opinions
about it.
You seem to like it.
I seem to feel like I didn’t necessarily like it, but I don’t hate it.
It wasn’t terrible.
I just thought.
Did you want like a, I would have liked some more definitive closure, but I also do like
the idea in whether it be movie or, you know, a book that we can kind of draw our own conclusions
to what happened, you know, it doesn’t need, I don’t need it to be put together with, you
know, it doesn’t need to be Star Wars, where it’s like, okay, I know exactly what happened
at the end here and I can move on.
I think with a, with a thriller type thing like this, I’m okay with a little more open
ended this.
What would you give it?
I get a 4.0.
I think it was, I like that.
I think, I like that.
Yeah, I think, I like that more than you.
It sounded like based off the text, but I just think she’s a great writer.
I think she’s, I like, I had to put the book down at times early on because I was like,
this is a little too real for me.
I don’t really want to deal with this.
I’ve had this before with her books where other thrillers, I think, they’re kind of like
goofy almost sometimes.
You know, where you’re like, this is so out there that I don’t, it’s almost like a
reading a fantasy book where you’re like, this doesn’t seem like the real world.
So whatever is not a big deal reading this where this one is like, this feels like I could
turn the news on this could be happening.
So I don’t really want to get into this today.
Yeah, it’s a great point because Gillian Flynn has said that she’s a huge true crime fan
and it felt like true crime.
We’ve read so many other thrillers that are exactly like you said, you know, they seem
fantastical or, you know, they seem like a farce, whatever the case is, but this seemed
like it could be a 2020 episode.
But each turn, like, holy shit, yeah, I wonder how do they do that?
So seeing, you know, seeing this relationship implode in front of us and then the aftermath
of what someone is willing to do to really punish someone for what they had done, I felt
real.
And it felt, yeah, it felt definitely like a 2020 episode.
And I, after I sat with it a little longer, I gave it a 3.5, which I think is very fair.
And it was mostly because we were talking about, I think we’ve read so many thrillers on
here and most of them were just so bad that this being good and I think it’s very good.
Her writing is good for sure.
But it’s hard to do this.
She put it, like, the twist is like halfway through the book yet we still want to continue
to read and know what happens.
And there’s a little like many twists in there throughout the, the desi stuff obviously.
But the big twist of her being alive and her, you know, diary being fake and her not being
that person is like halfway through the book.
It’s not, oh, last page, something happens and it’s like, that was what we’re here for,
you know, kind of like written by AI.
This is the opposite of that.
So 3.5, yeah, it’s, if someone has never heard of it, obviously, it should be hard to do.
I would definitely recommend it as a thriller, this and sharp objects, they were both really
good.
Yeah, great.
Well, what are you coming to next?
Uh, next we got Red Wall.
Yeah.
What a turn.
Yeah, I don’t know.
Did you read this one?
You were a kid?
Yes.
Like fourth grade maybe.
Okay.
Red Wall by Brian Jake.
Jakey’s, two of Jake’s.
Jack was?
Yeah, which, uh, the audio books a little bit tough.
Oh, yeah, I don’t, you can’t read the, you can’t listen to the audio book.
It’s a Scottish or not, uh, it’s either a Scottish or Welch person reading it.
And I’m like, this is impossible.
And I finally used to it in the bad guy’s voice is, I have no idea what the accident is.
It’s like, it’s the worst accident I’ve ever heard.
You can’t understand what the guy is saying.
What?
The main character is a mouse though.
Why didn’t they get a mouse to read it?
I don’t know anything.
And it’s, I’m, this is the first book I’ve read and I can’t remember one.
That’s like one X speed.
I’m not even speeding enough because I’m like, I can’t understand what these smokers are
saying.
Uh, nonetheless.
I don’t know how this is a kid’s book, but it’s hilarious.
But yeah, uh, I was like, I’m really surprised that you’d never read it.
It was like, it’s like a whole series.
And it’s like, I feel like I’ve heard this or read it or like another life I’ve read it,
you know, like deja vu reading it, but I don’t remember it.
This is like what gets kids into fantasy is this book.
Maybe I did.
I maybe, but we’ll see about the end.
I can recall.
I mean, I don’t recall any of it.
I just remember reading in fourth grade and being like, oh shit, like this and maybe
like the, the wrinkle wrinkle in time.
Isn’t there another like Disney animated show with mice that did similar like adventures?
All sorts of tons of that.
You’re talking about the great mouse detective.
What do you mean?
Yeah, maybe that’s why I’m like, rescuer is the rescuer is down under that’s what I’m thinking
of.
Yes, the rescuer is.
Yeah, this is definitely very different than those.
This is more like medieval.
But as I’m reading it, I was like, holy shit, I like this is for like, it’s a lot of
things.
Schoolers like some of the, and also some of the vocabulary is like, I don’t even know
what it means.
Yeah.
Good, good, good for them.
But the book has a map, which is already up for me.
Oh, geez, I maybe have to find the book.
The map is like the kids monopoly version of real monopoly.
If you were thinking about like Lord of the Rings to this map, it’s like Lord of the Rings
is middle earth is this massive place, all these different places.
This is like, here’s the abbey and it’s like a circle with like, here are the woods
next to the abbey.
Here’s the open gate next to the abbey.
That’s why the not coming back I want.
Yeah, it’s like a child through the map.
But yeah, we got a, we got Redwall coming up next and then, I think we’re going to have
a couple interviews after that.
So, it should be fun.
All right, Keith, well, that was Gone Girl.
Don’t go disappearing me.
I’ll talk to you for Redwall.
All right.
Bye now.