The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A young woman is making a living, faking it as a cut-price psychic working at Spiritual Palms (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). She makes a decent wage - mostly by telling people what they want to hear. But then she meets Susan Burke. Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year old stepson Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor, built in 1893. Susan has become convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home, and taking possession of the stepson. She has even found trickles of blood on the wall. The young woman doesn't believe in exorcism or the supernatural, but she does see an opportunity to make a lot of money. However when she enters the house for the first time, and meets Miles, she begins to feel it too, as if the very house is watching her, waiting, biding its time....
This is a short story by Gillian Flynn, as soon as I heard she was releasing this I knew I had to get a copy. I was surprised to discover it is a short story though at around 64 pages. This allowed me to read it in one sitting.
This story has left me thinking what the hell? It seemed to be all over so quickly and I needed time to digest what I had read. This story begins with a female narrator, we don't know who she is or what her name is, however after a few pages we discover who she is, a fake psychic by day and previous lady of the night. She is beginning to get to grips with her knew role when she meets Susan. Susan comes to her for help, she believes her Victorian house that she lives in is haunted and wants her to come and try to put it right. The woman agrees to help her even though she doesn't believe in all the strange things going on in the house. On entering she feels something is not right in the house and vows to Susan to help her.
The story although so short packs a lot in, I felt it was part horror part thriller and would have been perfect if I had read this in October. The lead character I didn't like that much and my feelings about Susan also changed throughout the story. My only negative is that I didn't feel like the characters were as developed as they could have been and at parts in the story it felt a little rushed. I think this would have been the good beginning of a full length novel.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Your brother murdered your family. Your evidence put him away . . . the gripping second novel from the author of the mega-bestselling GONE GIRL.
Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over 20 years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent.
Ben was a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lived. But he did have a girlfriend - a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. Through her, Ben became involved with drugs and the dark arts. When the town suddenly turned against him, his thoughts turned black. But was he capable of murder? Libby must delve into her family's past to uncover the truth - no matter how painful...
From the opening chapter told by Libby Day I was hooked. Gillian Flynn appears to have this great knack of throwing out her line, hooking the reader and then slowly reels them in over the course of the novel.
The story is told from three perspectives and although it does skip from past to present it is done in a uniform way so that the reader is not confused or lost at any time. The story essentially is about a family tragedy in Kansas, Missouri during 1985 and is told by the one surviving family member Libby Day, her brother Ben, and her mother Patty. Through these different perspectives we learn the hidden secrets of these three and how on January 3rd 1985 Libby's family is murdered and her brother blamed for the events.
Patty a divorced mother of four is desperately trying to keep the family farm going while bringing up her children. Exhausted, working so hard to keep all ends up in the air she neglects to really see what is happening in her family, she starts to worry about her son being involved in satanic rituals; afraid to over react and push him further away from her but needing to protect him she finds herself drifting away from her son, not really knowing him. Her ex husband and father to the children Runner turns up periodically when he wants money, never helps her to keep the farm going, doesn't worry how she manages only sees her as a meal ticket. She can't confide in him about the children who he doesn't understand or really care about anyway and Patty finds herself constantly alone except from her sister Diana.
Then we have Ben - fifteen, troubled youngster in that he always feels inadequate, his father when he is around appears to mock him, he has no real friends, gets lost in his music Heavy Metal behind a padlocked door to keep out his sisters in particular Michelle. A loner who is desperate to belong somewhere he gets involved with some older college kids who also mock him but appear to accept him the way he is. He meets Diondra a girl well out of his league, older and smarter than him who uses him when she wants some fun. Ben takes the reader through the story from his point of view and although he can act weirdly we begin to question whether he could have murdered his family.
Libby Day Ben's little sister - 7 years old when the tragedy happened, starts the reader on the journey of unraveling just who did commit those murders. When we meet Libby 25 years have passed since the murders and her brother Ben has been in jail all those years. Now a young woman in her 30's deeply affected by what happened she has become a suspicious, complex, selfish and sometimes violent character. Flynn does not try to portray her as a victim more as a survivor who has had to cocoon herself in a hard shield. Having spent the years surviving on well wishers money she is now out of funds and must either work or find another way to keep herself. She hears of the Kill Club when one of its members contacts her for a 'guest' appearance for money and she embarks on a journey of discovery, secrets and lies that changes her life forever.
A pacey page turner of a novel, good developed characters, broken, flawed Libby, weird moody Ben and their exhausted down trodden mother all make for a satisfying read. Good secondary characters keep this little time bomb ticking along with the Gothic and dark references reflecting the period, tight knit community prejudices and opinions and the innocence of youth all coming together to make this novel work.
I like the way Gilllian Flynn pulls you in and does not let you go until she's ready.
Has to be another 4 stars for this one.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
'Who are you?
What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?'
I did not have the luxury of being able to read this novel in one sitting which was a shame as it was so captivating I really wanted to read on and on. However I couldn’t wait until I picked it up again and it was easy to remember where I had left it.
The story is basically that on the morning of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary Amy goes missing. Nick has been out early to get some last minute things to celebrate he comes home to find the door wide open and Amy gone. There looks to have been some sort of struggle in the living room but other than that there is nothing. Nick is number one suspect and has nothing to prove where he was at the time this happened although he swears he did not kill her. We see the trial by media of Nick played out in front of the public which condemn him and Flynn shows how easy it is to make someone look guilty with no actual proof. Amy’s diaries are found in the house which she has written since she first met Nick up to the time she disappears and they paint a very disturbing picture of Nick and hint that Amy is afraid of him which adds to stack up a pretty ‘conclusive’ case against him.
The story is so cleverly interwoven and expertly written to play with your mind that by the end of the novel I felt as if I had been through a psychological journey with the characters. It has so much going on, murder, manipulation, marital breakdown, twists and turns and perfectly crafted toxic characters that makes you feel one moment Nick was the ‘villain’ to changing your mind the next and making Amy the ‘villain’.
It is a masterly piece of writing that questions how well we can ever know each other and especially the people that we love. How an innocent action or word can toss someone over the edge without you realising it until it is too late – brilliant suspense. The first person narration allows us to be Nick and to see through his eyes and hear through his ears, this lets the reader get to know him and to form an opinion of him, allowing us to ‘experience’ all that he goes through so that by the time the police and media have labelled him as a cold hearted killer we can’t quite go with this. Nick is flawed, he is evasive but on the whole he appears to be a genuine and good person.
However we then have a narrative by Amy his wife who talks to us via her diaries which makes the reader unsure of whether she is dead or not, and Amy paints an altogether different picture of Nick as the book progresses. Amy’s account through her diaries makes the reader very empathetic with her, she tells of brutality by Nick and how she becomes afraid of him. I then really believed Nick was capable of murdering her but there was a little niggle that all was not right with Amy. And it’s not really until Part Two ‘Boy Meets Girl’ that we begin to see Amy in a different light.
Because we think we know what has happened (Amy has been abducted or killed) we start to make assumptions, this is very clever as Flynn uses this to connect us to the characters, they are making assumptions about each other too, they don’t really know what each other is thinking or feeling, what each one is capable of, and of course we know that as this is a psychological thriller there will be red herrings along the way.
The novel is very much a product of the present times and Flynn manages to link the reader through the emotional roller coaster that both Nick and Amy feel with the loss of their jobs, the damage this is doing to their relationship, family trauma of Nick’s mother dying and having to return to his family home which makes it easy to identify with them both.
Overall the book was captivating, intriguing, cleverly crafted and a very good psychological thriller with a lot of curve balls thrown in so I would give this book a 5 star rating.
I suppose the only disappointment was the end, without giving this away it didn’t really tie the ends up for me tight enough, there was unfinished business. It would have been good to have the ending clearer but having said this there is enough material for a sequel here if Gillian Flynn has that in mind – I hope she does!
