This question is part of the GRAB(ook) Club, an online book club open to anyone and everyone.  It contains more than a few spoilers for Gone Girl, so read at your own peril.  No, really, stop reading this post if you plan on reading Gone Girl.

I’ve already written on how I feel about the infertility and treatment protocol plot points.  (For the record, though I’m picking at this book, I really did enjoy it.  The writing is brilliant, the characters well-drawn, the pacing perfect.)

But there’s another discrepancy I found while reading the book: Amy didn’t always act like Amy.

I mean, she acted Amy-ish, but she departed from herself in an enormous way, and I don’t have a good explanation for why.

We’re told that she punished Hilary Handy for some pretty mild transgressions.  She forgot to wait for her after English (twice).  Forgot she was allergic to strawberries (also twice).  So Amy plotted to make her look like a stalker and succeeded in the most brilliant way.

Then we’re told that she punished Tommy O’Hara just a few years before Nick and Amy got together.  After three months of casual dating, he starts to pull away and see other people.  Amy finds out and she pins a rape on him.  Again, an intricate plot that is put into effect pretty much instantaneously.

And then she punishes Nick for his affair with Andie.  It takes her a year to plot it — the year leading up to their 5-year anniversary.  So from year 4 to year 5 of marriage, Amy plots.

Not really acting like Amy.

It’s two-fold: one, Amy is someone who likes immediate gratification.  She executes those other plans fairly quickly — in under a month for at least one of them.  Maybe two months for the other.  And with framing Nick, she is jumping out of her skin to find out what happens after the plan goes into effect.  This is not someone who is detached and calm; she is anxious to see him punished.  So she waits a year?  I mean, yes, obviously waiting a year makes for a more intricate plan, but would Amy — the Amy we know in the book — really wait a year to punish someone?  She wouldn’t rush things along a bit?  She’d keep sleeping next to him, never goaded to speed things along, every time he comes home smelling like Andie?

Fine, I could see a really good plan that takes a long time to set up being intriguing for Amy.  She’s also fenced in by the date of their anniversary if she wants to use that as part of the plan.   But we find out that she punishes Hilary for some very small transgressions: not waiting after class.  I’m willing to accept that in the high school years that could be a big deal.  But with Tommy, she’s an adult.  It’s under two years before she meets Nick.  She punishes Tommy for going out on a date with another girl after they’ve been casually dating for three months.  A huge punishment — rape charges.

But she waits until Nick has an affair, overlooking all the other transgressions that came before that point: being remote, being critical, being thoughtless, being cruel.  Not being the man she thinks she deserves.  Moving her away from New York without allowing her to be part of the discussion.  He pisses her off for years we’re told in the second half of the book.

Why doesn’t she punish him sooner?

Why does she wait for the affair to punish him?

Are we to believe that she loves Nick so much that she’s willing to overlook all those other things that would have pushed her over the edge if it had been another person?  If she is a psychopath, would she understand love in the first place?

In this tiny way, she ceases to act like Amy, something humans do all the time.  We regularly do things “out of character,” hence why humans are unpredictable.  So it wasn’t a deal breaker for me in the book, but I found myself distracted through the second half of the book, wondering why it took her so long to turn on Nick.  Why she acted out of character this one time when it came to doling out the punishments.

What did you think?  Did that seem out of character to you?  Why do you think she waited to punish Nick?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for Gone Girl.  You can get your own copy of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn at bookstores including Amazon.

This is a post for the GRAB(ook) Club. Like the idea of a book club where you don’t have to leave your living room? Then read more about the GRAB(ook) Club which holds the book discussion on blogs, a Facebook group, and a GoodReads group.

Last night, I went to the Vice President’s residence for an event.  It was my first time going to the Observatory, despite having lived here most of my entire life.  I knew the general vicinity of the residence; that you could see it from the end of Reno Road.  But I decided to take River Road for no other reason except that it was the way I used to get into the city when I cut school.

Not that I EVER cut school, kids.

It had been a very long time since I had driven down Wisconsin, and I felt this need to say hello to the buildings as I passed them.  The Dancing Crab, with the sign outside that used to say, “we have crabs!” to which Matt would always reply, “I do too, but I don’t advertise it.”  And the old site for the Outer Circle where I saw My Own Private Idaho six times.  Closed down Maggie’s Pizza, which never carded.  Closed down Jandara where we ate dinner the last night the twins were in the NICU.  Cafe Ole and the Sidwell campus where we’d go to dances during high school.  Cactus Cantina, my break-up restaurant where I asked everyone to take me if they ever had bad news so only one place would be ruined for me in the city.  The Cathedral, where we’d go to catch fireflies in the garden at night; where my cousin once whispered to me as I sat down on a bench, there’s a corpse inside of there; this building is filled with corpses.

The route between my childhood home and Georgetown is mentally strewn with corpses; closed businesses, receptacles of past conversations.

*******

After waiting in a long security line to park the car (and after asking the guard not to judge my trunk since I had dissected a child’s car seat earlier in the day), I got in another line to go through physical security with the other 50 or so guests.  I could hear crickets outside, and I was trying very hard not to hear the crickets outside.  There was also piped in music entertaining us as we stood along the fence.

“This is just like Disney World,” I commented to the man standing behind me, who agreed.  “It’s like we’re waiting for a ride, and they’re entertaining us during the wait so it doesn’t feel quite so long.  The Vice President is classy to pipe in music.”

And then I realized that there was a five-piece band playing us in as we entered.

I ended up walking through the rooms, looking at the pictures, and talking with random people while we waited for the Bidens to enter.  When they did, they both spoke for about 20 minutes about breast cancer.  The Vice President’s speech was incredibly moving.  I didn’t think I would get so choked up, but there I was, starting to cry when he spoke about how close we were to a cure — not just to eradicate breast cancer, but all cancers.  When he talked about the importance of caregivers using the collective term “us” to illustrate how one person’s cancer affects all the people who care for and about that person.  He talked about men with breast cancer.  And he kicked the whole speech off by making the point that he got in trouble the first time he brought up breast cancer on the House floor; not because people were horrified by the disease itself but by the fact that he used the term “breast.”  Really, he’s an incredible speaker, and I wasn’t the only one who ended up wiping her eyes.

Dr. Biden spoke after him, pointing out various people at the party and their personal stories.  I missed part of what she was saying because there was a little girl standing near the platform in the center of the room, and the Vice President crossed behind his wife to sit down on the edge of the stage and encouraged the little girl to sit down next to him.  She was trying her best to look serious and be proper, but he was whispering things to her and being silly.  The whole thing was happening at my knees since I was standing next to the stage, and it was really cute.

The Vice President is really one of the warmest, unfussy, smartest people I’ve met in Washington.  He’s like that guy you get into a conversation with at Starbucks while you’re waiting for your drink; totally approachable and accessible.  Unpretentious.  He’d make a wonderful president.  And Dr. Biden came across as a bit more intense; very very smart.

Afterward, we got in a line and everyone had a moment with the Vice President and Dr. Biden, and then they put their arms around each person and took a picture.   If I had known I was going to be in a picture, I probably would have worn something else. I sort of felt like their child between them, and that we were taking our Christmas picture.  Not that I’ve ever taken a Christmas picture since I’ve never sent a Christmas card.  But it felt like a Christmas moment…

I’ll post it when they mail it to me.

And then there was more eating and drinking, but I went home so I could see the kids before they fell asleep and have my Special K.  As I walked outside, back into that cricket-y night, the bells from the Cathedral were ringing across the street.

I drove back past all those landmarks again, muscle memory making me turn onto Brandywine so I could loop back to River Road again.  I drove home without music; the car perfectly quiet except for the hum of the engine, the whisper of the road underneath my tires.

*******

The message of the evening is still playing in my head: we are so close.  He pointed to an older child who was there with her mother and said that she would probably live to see the day where all cancers were eradicated.  That what seems like a fantasy to the older generations would be a reality for these younger ones.  Isn’t that an incredible idea?  A world without cancer?  I want to believe that it’s true and do anything I can do to help that become a reality.

There are NO spoilers in this post because I haven’t read the trilogy.

I’ll admit that while I saw Divergent and Insurgent in bookstores, I didn’t pay any attention to Veronica Roth’s trilogy until I saw the reaction to the final book in the series, Allegiant.  I followed the distressed cry from Twitter to her Amazon page where I was stunned to see a sea of 1-star reviews despite it being on the bestseller list.  While others have since come out in favour of the book, this random review sums up the 1-star reviews:

I finished this last night and afterwards I felt just dead inside. I absolutely hate when a series ends leaving me feeling unsatisfied and even, in this case, angry. I feel kind of betrayed by the author.

Is it wrong that I’m now going to read the series just to see what is making people this upset?  And that the titles so perfectly invert in this trilogy, with fans showing great allegiance to Divergent, uprising a bit with Insurgent, and then parting ways with the author on Allegiant?

I think it’s impossible to read without expectations, especially when we’re emotionally attached to the characters.  We want Harry Potter to win over Voldemort.  We want Bella to end up with Edward but for Jacob to be happy too.  But could we have been okay with an ending where Voldemort escapes, or even worse, triumphs?  What if Bella remains human with Jacob while Edward lives in a distant vampire coven, narrowly escaping a world she realizes she doesn’t really want to be a part of for eternity?

As long as the story makes sense and the characters make choices that ring true, is it fair to put our expectations on the author and not accept the story as it’s told to us?  Is it fair to lash out because it the book doesn’t fulfill our desires?  There’s a difference between being annoyed by an ending and feeling betrayed by an author.  Or, as this reviewer states:

I have never been more disappointed in the last book of a series than I was reading this book. Normally I reread a series at least 3-4 times. Because of this book I will never read this series again, no matter how much I loved the first two books. They are ruined. Forever.

Gulp.

As people are deeply ensconced in writing their own books for NaNoWriMo, it begs the question: Is the job of author predicting what people want and giving it to them, or is it showing them a story they could have never told themselves?

I know nothing about the Divergent series, though I’m excited to start it soon.  Perhaps the ending simply doesn’t ring true; that the characters act… out of character.  I will obviously be reading it differently than any of the people who followed it from its inception since I’m going into it to figure out what was so upsetting about the ending.  And perhaps by going into it with that attitude, I won’t be able to be disappointed by the ending?  Perhaps that’s the way we should read all books?

When we were at the AFI Silver Theater, this gorgeous 75-year-old theater in Silver Spring (right off the Metro, if you’re ever in DC for any reason.  Totally worth seeing a film there just for the sake of being in the theater), to see Broadway Idiot, I saw a sign announcing a special screening of Jesus Christ Superstar for the 40th anniversary.

“Take me,” I breathed at Josh.

“Nah,” he said, despite the fact that I had broken out into Judas’s opening lament in front of the box office.  I was about to launch into a full dance number a la Simon Zealotes, chest thumping and all, but then I realized that I didn’t need Josh.  I had my girl child.

So the next morning, I sweetly told her that she’d be accompanying me to see Jesus Christ Superstar as part of her on-going musical theater education.  She was a little dubious owing to the fact that she (1) knows pretty much nothing about Jesus Christ and (2) wasn’t really in love with the music based on my kitchen performance.  But I promised her that it was going to be incredible.  And, by the way, Ted Neeley and Barry Dennen were going to be there.  She would get to be in the same room as Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate.

When we arrived at the theater, we saw the line looping down the hallway and we debated whether or not to buy popcorn.  But ultimately risked it because a good seat without popcorn is really no better than a bad seat with popcorn.  But we lucked out and got a good seat AND popcorn.

And then we turned around and RIGHT BEHIND US WAS TED NEELEY.  I mean, yes, he was about 50 feet away and in a roped off VIP section.  But we still twisted around in our seat when I squealed at her, “it’s Jesus!”  The ChickieNob debated whether to walk over and say hello, but then decided that she would rather keep her seat and relax.  She reasoned that meeting him wouldn’t really be like meeting Jesus since he was just an actor, which was really no different from any other job.  And she thought that it must be a really annoying life because some people were acting as if they were meeting Jesus, getting emotional and tongue-tied in seeing him.  And she said it was awfully creepy the way we were all looking at him.  So we twisted back in our seat and ate through half the bag of popcorn.

Ted and Barry and the film’s distributor spoke before the film which I thought was very interesting, though the ChickieNob whispered midway through their talk that she was full of their words and ready to see the movie.  She also then whispered that she knew better than to raise her hand and tell them that in case I was worried about her manners.

Then the movie began and the ChickieNob joined me in my crush on Carl Anderson.  When he stepped off the bus in the beginning, she grabbed my arm and said, “he is so cute!”  And I said, “I know!”  And I realized that she was a MUCH better person to go to Jesus Christ Superstar with because Josh would have never critiqued Carl Anderson’s cuteness with me.  But the ChickieNob was good at leaning over and saying things like, “he sure looked cute there too” after a particularly good singing number.

And she got to see Beit Shean and Beit Guvrin, two places we’ve talked about going when we take them to Israel.  She loved that it was filmed there; really, that the whole story of Jesus Christ takes place there.  That these actors were dancing and singing in a space where she would one day be going.  You know that the second I get there, I’m going to get a distant look in my eyes and sing about how I don’t know how to love him.

After the movie, we ducked out for the bathroom, and there was an enormous line outside the men’s room.  I laughing said that I had never seen that — no line at the women’s room but an enormous line at the men’s room, and the man standing guard outside sheepishly informed me that Ted had to use the bathroom before he signed autographs, so they gave him sole use of the bathroom so he could pee undisturbed.

We decided then to skip out on the lobby where people were queuing up to meet Ted and Barry.  I’m sure they’re really nice people, but they are actors and not really Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate.  It felt a little bit like how people forget that Daniel Radcliffe is just an actor and not the real Harry Potter.  (The real Harry Potter, of course, is in his mid-thirties and lives in London and is an Auror, DUH!)  The fact that they needed to close off the bathroom just so he could urinate in peace spoke volumes to me about the frenzy he was about to encounter in the lobby.  And since we were full of words, to quote the ChickieNob, we headed home.

Singing the score at the top of my lungs.