Good as Gone (Gentry)

Good as Gone 
Amy Gentry, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544920958


Summary
Thirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom in the middle of the night, witnessed only by her younger sister.

Her family was shattered, but managed to stick together, hoping against hope that Julie is still alive.

And then one night: the doorbell rings. A young woman who appears to be Julie is finally, miraculously, home safe. The family is ecstatic—but Anna, Julie’s mother, has whispers of doubts.

She hates to face them. She cannot avoid them. When she is contacted by a former detective turned private eye, she begins a torturous search for the truth about the woman she desperately hopes is her daughter.

Propulsive and suspenseful, Good as Gone will appeal to fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, and keep readers guessing until the final pages. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Raised—West Houston, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Texas-Austin; Ph.D., University of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas


Amy Gentry lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two cats.

After graduating in 2011 with a PhD in English from the University of Chicago, she began a freelance writing career, writing book reviews, cultural criticism, and, for one strange and wonderful year, a fashion column.

She frequently reviews fiction for the Chicago Tribune Printer’s Row Journal, and her writing has appeared in Salon.com, xoJane, The Rumpus, the Austin Chronicle, the Texas Observer, LA Review of Books, Gastronomica, and the Best Food Writing of 2014. Good as Gone, her first thriller, is set in her hometown of Houston, Texas (From the publisher.)

Read the interview with Austin Statesman.

Book Reviews
If the central question of the novel is inescapably simple—Is this person Julie Whitaker or isn't she?—there are only two possible answers. But the attendant riddle of identity is correspondingly complex. In the end, Gentry's novel isn't primarily about the version of the self that comes from a name and a family of origin; instead, it draws our attention to the self that's forged from sheer survival, and from the clarifying call to vengeance.
Jean Hanff Korelitz - New York Times Book Review


A mother, a daughter, a zealot, an investigator, a family, a stripper, and more than a few survivors lay the riveting groundwork, but it's Amy Gentry's realistic portrayals of victims and their families that set Good As Gone apart from other page-turning crime dramas.... The end result is a true "novel of suspense": a book that's hard to put down not only because of our investment in the plot, but also because of our investment in the lives of the complicated characters.
Austin Chronicle


Compelling and emotionally nuanced.
Seattle Times


Both a mother-daughter and a family-under-fire story, Good As Gone is laden with confused identities and a thrumming plot. Amy Gentry's debut also holds a mirror up to the myriad ways rape culture is perpetuated.
Bustle


[S]uspenseful if flawed first novel.... Gentry does a good job of making the characters, especially Anna, psychologically plausible, but the final revelation is a letdown.
Publishers Weekly


Clever perspective changes give Gentry's debut building suspense.... Fans of Paula Hawkin's The Girl on the Train will enjoy the shifting points of view and the complex female characters, and those who liked Samantha Hunt's Mr. Splitfoot will appreciate the seedy characters and haunting theme of childhood vulnerability.... Gentry's depiction of a family working through immense suffering will connect with many readers.
Booklist


A kidnapped girl, missing for eight years, shows up on her parents' doorstep…but is it really her?... [B]ack-and-forth points of view which eventually dovetail in the big reveal (and the big reversal) are a popular tactic for the emotional thriller.... Debut novelist Gentry delivers on genre expectations with crisp, unobtrusive writing and well-executed plot twists.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our generic mystery questions.)

GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers

1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?

2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?

3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?

4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?

5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.

1. Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
2. Are they plausible or implausible?
3. Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?

6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?

7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?

1. Is the conclusion probable or believable?
2. Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
3. Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
4. Perhaps it's too predictable.
5. Can you envision a different or better ending?

8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?

9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?

(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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