Trying to keep a mystery unsolved
The Ben Affleck film “Gone Girl” opens today, and I will not be going.
For two weeks now, I’ve been trying to finish the novel that inspired the movie; I still have half of it to go.
I read slowly, and normally I don’t mind just poking along through a book, keeping the story in my own private headspace where nobody can spoil anything.
But this last week, the world was conspiring to spoil the big plot twist that happens halfway through the book. With the opening of the film, Affleck and the other stars have been all over radio and TV and in newspapers, talking about the film. I’ll bet it would be fun watching Matt Lauer and the other morning show interviewers stumbling all over the place trying to get a good conversation going about the film without revealing too much.
But I wouldn’t know. Every time I hear one of these interviews, I have to leap for the volume switch to mute things before I the wrong word pops out – the word that will confirm one of the several things I already suspect may be happening in the plot.
“Gone Girl” is a murder mystery so far, with husband Nick coming home from work to discover his wife, Amy, is gone, the house all torn up. There’s something not-quite-worried-enough about Nick’s reaction to Amy’s disappearance. I’m guessing the big plot twist will turn on that detail.
And I’m at the point in my reading that even if I were to hear just a word or two about what lies ahead in the story, it would spoil things.
Newspapers are reporting on and reviewing the movie, too, but a headline is enough to scare me off. What I’m worried about now are random conversations between students in my classroom, or posts on Facebook (another good reason to stay off of there) – anything that might taint my reading experience.
After a years-long hiatus, I’m rebooting my book club. In writing or calling the members to invite them back, I’ve mentioned that I’m reading “Gone Girl” now, and please don’t talk to me about it. Most of them probably think I’m goofy, since they all read it years ago.
My neighbor and friend Anne will be joining book club. While chatting with me online this week, she said she’d read “Gone Girl” and that she and her sister didn’t like it, because of the ending. Well, that was enough to get me squirreling around in my head about what she meant by that. Did Nick do it? Is Amy even dead? If this book gets spoiled, it will be eight hours of reading, wasted.
And so, until I’ve finished the book, I am avoiding all TV shows that feature Ben Affleck or Neil Patrick Harris. If I’m listening to radio, when I hear the words “film” and “mystery” or “best-seller” I will turn the station to something not likely to review movies, like the NASCAR Channel. I will walk away from all newspapers or checkout line magazines whose headlines include the words “Gone” or “Girl,” even if they’re not in that order.
Oh, and Anne? I’m not talking to her any more until I’m done.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.