At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Somers tagged five books with an outstanding standalone scene that can be read on its own, out of context, including:Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn: The “Cool Girl” MonologueRead about the other entries on the list.
Very few excerpts in novels have the kind of impact the Cool Girl speech in Gone Girl has had over the last few years. The soliloquy opens like this: “Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl.” Then it builds from there into one of the most ferocious and memorable inner monologues ever committed to paper. It’s rare to see a film adaptation criticized specifically over a single sequence in a novel that isn’t action-oriented, but the recent Gone Girl film caught some flack because people thought they gave short shrift to the Cool Girl speech. If you’re curious what the fuss about Gone Girl is all about, you can read this speech and suffer no spoilers, but know exactly why you want to read the rest of the book.
Gone Girl made Lucie Whitehouse's ten top list of psychological suspense novels with marriages at their heart and Kathryn Williams's list of eight of fiction’s craziest unreliable narrators.
Also see ten books you must read if you loved "Gone Girl" and six domestic chillers for "Gone Girl" fans.
--Marshal Zeringue
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