- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
'Gone Girl' Book Boners
I usually reserve this blog space for general asinine commentary, but I thought I would diverge a bit this week and see if anyone else had noticed mistakes while reading the book Gone Girl.
First, let me say this is not the type of recreational literature I normally read. I typically lean towards fantasy and science fiction, not "chick-lit" as this book's genre is sometimes referred to. But with the making of the movie version of Gone Girl in Cape, I decided to read the novel so I wouldn't be clueless.
My wife acquired a copy from the library at Southeast and I polished off the 400 pages over the past couple weeks. Because of the movie and the fact the novel is set in Missouri -- a state I've lived in all my life -- I guess I was hyper-attentive and a couple of factual errors just jumped out at me.
For example, even though the city of North Carthage described in the book is completely fictitious, author Gillian Flynn provide clues to its location. She tells us that Hannibal is 20 minutes away (Page 107) and that someone "drove towards St. Louis... and on the way there stopped at Hannibal" (Page 380).
So obviously North Carthage is about 20 minutes north of Hannibal or if you map it in Google, a 2 hour and 15 minute drive from St. Louis. Yet, elsewhere, a character in the book is described as living in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue "forty minutes" from North Carthage.
Obviously those locations are nowhere close to one another.
In another scene a character takes the train to Jonesboro, Arkansas from St. Louis. The trip is noted as being 8 hours each way. However, in reality there is no passenger train service to Jonesboro, Arkansas. The closest train station to Jonesboro is 24 miles away in Walnut Ridge and the trip time listed on the Amtrak website is well under 5 hours.
I feel if a novelist blends reality into a story, then their fiction should conform to the facts.
Respond to this blog
Posting a comment requires a subscription.