Is he a cheater? Yes ,is she crazy ? Yes yes yes
Did he or any of her exes deserve her treatment ? This one is for your assessment ,to me ijust loved the story ,hated the girl and frankly did not sympathize with her at all
I think you would have to be guilty of actual murder to deserve what Nick was about to get! She was crazy but apparently very smart.
I never understood why she kept telling tales about her exes and getting them in trouble. So no, I don't see why they would have deserved her treatment.
I loved the story too!
She concocted this plot to have Nick be convicted of her faked murder.
She was going to hang out until Nick got executed (before she got robbed) but it would have taken years to go through all the capital punishment appeals.
But as soon as she sees the faked plea from Nick to come back, she was willing to forgive and forget?
Yes crazy but the instant reversal doesn't make sense.
No, that's not the prime mover here.
Remember that she says in voice-over she plans to weigh herself down with stones and slip into the ocean so her body is never found.
That was premised on being able to live on the money that the punk couple robbed her of. She had to hastily change plans, dump the car and call up the old flame who still adored her.
She was only going to stay with him until she made a new plan to disappear but Nick's TV broadcast showed her a way out IF she could explain being with the Neil Patrick Harris character, hence the fake kidnapping/rape story...
Come on lads, bags of swank!
I don't think that's how it was. wco81 is right about the plot to have Nick convicted of her faked murder, of course. He would most likely be convicted, but he wouldn't get the death penalty unless the body was found. That's quite unusual, if even possible according to the Missouri laws, if I recall correctly. Or in any of the states which have the penalty.
Remember that she says in voice-over she plans to weigh herself down with stones and slip into the ocean so her body is never found.
Gotta remember that we're dealing with an extremely unreliable narrator when it comes to Amy's diary. And since she clearly states that after a certain point in the diary, she is just making $hit up to frame her husband, we don't know what really happened between the two and who was "at fault" for their marriage going downhill.
The only other perspective we're getting is Nick's - which is also highly subjective. We never get a scene set during the decline of their relationship as told by a neutral observer. Scenes set during their decline are either told in flashback through Amy's (more or less made-up) diary or by Nick talking about it to other people. The only "objective" scenes we get are all set in the present when their relationship has already gone down the toilet.
Thus Nick cheating on his wife isn't really something we can use against him (IMO). Yes: Cheating on someone isn't "nice", but without knowing what got him to the point of starting a relationship on the side, we can't really judge him for this. If a guy (or a woman) is caught in a loveless, dead-end marriage, him/her cheating is quite a bit different from someone who simply sleeps around to bolster his ego or because he's horny.
Seeing how we *do* get to see Amy kill a guy in cold blood to "fix her relationship", I don't think we were ever meant to sympathize with her. Perhaps if they had left Desi's murder ambiguous (leaving the possibility that her story about him raping her was true), but the way that part of the story is handled, I think at that point it's pretty clear that Amy's a psycho.
S.
I think we get the best view of what Amy is like through her old schoolmate and through Tommy. Each thought she was the greatest, but when they got to know her they were uncomfortable around her. Tommy in particular is very specific about how humorless she is. She doesn't enjoy laughing and doesn't think other people should enjoy laughing. She never lets anything go - look what she did with the truck driver that cut her off - she spent months setting him up, pretending to be other motorists reporting reckless driving. Her brain never rests, so you can never rest, because she's registering every single thing you do. It's probably like being on video surveillance 24/7. REAL Amy writes that she kept up the Cool Girl act for two years of marriage, then dropped it, because married people should love each other for who they are. And Nick didn't love that Amy.
The only Amy I enjoyed was Ozark Amy. I actually felt badly when she was robbed. I did note that even though Greta and Jeff were n'er do wells, and very predictable, Amy STILL had to get back at them by spitting in their food.
I think the book overstates how fascinating someone like Amy is, and also overstates how brilliant she is. Her schemes aren't brilliant. They're simply obsessive. I think the concept of "discipline" is irrelevant. If you're that obsessive, you have no choice. Discipline has nothing to do with it. This is not someone who'd make anyone feel alive. This is a woman who is exhausting, who has nothing to offer, who is obsessed with provoking reactions from others, and it's tiring.
ijust loved the story ,hated the girl and frankly did not sympathize with her at all
Sounds like the perfect marriage to me. And like all too many I see around me.
shareat first I took her side (I wouldn't condone framing an innocent person for murder in real life, but fictional characters can remain likeable after doing things a real person could never be forgiven for). he did cheat on her, he didn't seem to care much about her being missing and he wasn't particularly likeable. but when we learn more about the real Amy and how she set an innocent guy up on rape charges just because the relationship wasn't working out... Nick's an *beep* but Amy is something else
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I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me...
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