Gone Girl summary

One early afternoon, while Nick is at the bar chatting with Go about the dire state of his marriage, he receives a call from his neighbor telling him the front door to his house is wide open. When Nick goes home, he finds that furniture has been broken and the iron has been left on. There are signs of a struggle – but no sign of Amy. The police are quickly called to the scene, and Nick’s entire life seems caught in a completely unexpected whirlwind, filled with questions he’s finding difficult to answer.

This early section of the book alternates between chapters from Nick’s perspective – but we’re also treated to entries from Amy's diary. In her own words, Amy fills in some of the gaps in the couple’s history. In entries that date back to the day she first met Nick at a party in 2005, we learn how Amy can recall every detail of their first kiss. As she describes it, she’s over-the-moon in love with Nick, and excited to get married and move into their own brownstone apartment in the city.

The second part of Gone Girl starts from Amy’s perspective. But not the Amy from her diary entries – the real Amy. She describes how she cut herself to leave a pool of blood, and how she cleaned up that blood and staged the crime scene in a purposefully sloppy manner. She confirms that she spent a year carefully filling in her phony diary. She also describes inviting her pregnant neighbor over to her house for lemonade, and disabling the toilet so she could steal some of her neighbor’s urine. 

Amy walks us through it all, step by step – how she spent the past year planning this elaborate crime. And we learn her motive: her anger over discovering Nick’s affair, and her general disappointment in all the ways Nick has changed over the years. He stopped being the guy she married and started being this distant, disillusioned, uncaring man. 

As it turns out, Nick’s apology works. When Amy sees it on TV, it wins her over. Nick has understood his failings and is willing to change. Plus, things are clearly not going to work out with Desi. He’s obsessive, controlling, and needy. So she comes up with a new plan: she’ll frame Desi as her kidnapper and rapist. To do this, she’ll spend a few days abusing herself with a wine bottle. Then she’ll seduce Desi, make him orgasm, kill him, escape, return home, and rescue Nick – who has clearly learned his lesson.

Later that week, Nick is at home when he suddenly hears a lot of noise coming from the press outside. Amy has driven right up to the house and emerged from the car in a bloody nightgown, with twine still dangling from her bruised wrists. After she runs into her husband’s arms, Nick quickly brings Amy inside to figure out what her new story is. When Nick learns that Amy has murdered Desi, he’s horrified.