Welcome to the Ways, Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and framing your bad husband for murder.

Every episode, you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't get off our minds.

And today you've got me, Heather Shredel, a Slate staff writer. And me, Laura Miller, Slate's

books and culture columnist. And today we're celebrating the 10-year anniversary of a little

book called Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

And we're attempting to reckon with all that it has rocked in the publishing industry and beyond.

I remember what a big deal Gone Girl was when it came out.

It was the book of that summer.

I read it on the beach along with everyone else.

And probably I wanted to read it in the first place because critics like you, Laura, were raving about it.

It got such amazing reviews out of the gate.

And you've written a lot about Gone Girl and its imitators over the years.

Yes, I have.

I was really floored by Gone Girl when I first read it, which was just before it was

published. It's such a clever, well-written, insightful thriller, and it's set in the sort of

post-recession late aughts among sort of Brooklyn culture journalists who are coping with not just the recession,

but the kind of collapse of the glossy magazine industry where you can make a living,

writing quizzes and interviewing musicians and filmmakers.

So I knew that really well.

I could really identify with that.

And it was also a great riff on middle-class life and gender relations

with its famous cool girl rant.

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