The Grownup

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (2015)

Gillian Flynn's standalone short story begins when the unnamed narrator had to give up her job of giving hand jobs because she had carpel tunnel syndrome. Luckily, the establishment she worked for, Spiritual Palms, also employed psychics. One day a desperate woman named Susan Burke comes in and the narrator goes a bit above and beyond to help with her family problems, but is soon in over her head.

I don't want to say too much about it, since it's just a short story so there's not a whole lot to it. The setup was great, and I really liked the narrator (and didn't even realize until I started writing this that I don't know her name.)

Late in the story there's a part where a character goes into a lengthy explanation that he simply didn't have time for, and which was a whole lot of telling and not showing. A friend's Goodreads review describes it as "verbal throw up." It felt like time stood still in the story to wait for the guy to explain what was happening, which was disappointing coming from a talent like Flynn.

However, I was pretty sucked in up until that time, and there were parts that seriously gave me the creeps. I love Gillian Flynn, and an imperfect story from her is better than some other authors' best works so this wasn't especially disappointing.

It also qualifies for Winter Bingo, because this book was a gift. I realize it's not an entire novel, but it is a stand-alone book and it's not like there are even prizes for this challenge (I don't think?) so I feel fine including it. Plus I just read Hild, which was approximately 4,000 pages long so I think the two balance each other out.

Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006), narrated by Ann Marie Lee

When a pre-teen girl is murdered in her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker heads out from Chicago to investigate. A similar murder occurred the previous year, and though the town is reluctant to receive the sort of notoriety serial murders will bring, Camille is determined to get her story. But returning to Wind Gap dredges up ghosts in her own past, particularly that of her sister Marion who died at around the same age as these girls.

That's enough to put anyone on an emotional roller-coaster, but Camille is also battling her own self-destructive impulses. Ever since her sister died so many years ago, she has cut words into her body, now a veritable tapestry of scars. Since her stay in a psychiatric hospital, Camille has stopped cutting but it's a tenuous recovery, and she seems to have replaced that behavior with heavy drinking. It doesn't help that during her investigation she has to stay with her mother, step-father, and 13-year-old younger half-sister Amma, who she barely knows. All of this is a recipe for a story rife with dysfunction and dark, dark secrets.

Gillian Flynn's earlier novels, Sharp Objects and Dark Places, are more gritty than the more well-known Gone Girl. Everything is unpleasant. Characters are not likable, houses are rundown and dirty, the weather is oppressive, the town's main business is an industrial pig farm. Illness is described in nauseating detail, and when Camille is injured her mother pokes at the wound. Everything bad is just aggravated and made worse until everyone feels horrible, both physically and emotionally. Camille, much like Libby from Dark Places, is a troubled young woman with a dark past who is emotionally distant and has few, if any, friends. Camille is more functional than Libby since she actually has a career, but it seems she's barely holding onto it. It's been a while since I read Gone Girl so it's a bit difficult to compare them but although they are all pretty screwed up, I think these older novels have a more pervasive darkness.

Because I so enjoyed the audiobook of Dark Places, I listened to the audio for this one as well. I would have done so much earlier had it also been narrated by Rebecca Lowman, who I sincerely believe should be hired to read all the books. All of them. Ann Marie Lee isn't bad, but I was a bit put off at the very beginning when she mispronounced both "Gillian" and "Pulitzer." Some of her voices were a little overdone, such as younger sister Amma's high-pitched, wheedling tone that set her up as more of a bad character than necessary right at the start. Otherwise it was a good listening experience and I wish Flynn had more material, because something about her books works very well on audio for me.

I have a lot to say about this novel and its characters, but I don't want to recount too much for those of you who haven't read it. Flynn's books really probably aren't for everyone, but I just think they're all brilliant and I somehow enjoy wallowing in the bleakness. Nobody writes quite like she does.

Dark Places

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (2009), narrated by Rebecca Lowman, Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins, and Robertson Dean

Everybody remembers the 1985 Prairie Massacre of Kinnakee, Kansas. A teenager named Ben Day killed his mother and two younger sisters as part of a ritual Satanic sacrifice. Only 7-year-old Libby survived. Libby is now 31 and barely functional. She isn't able to work - many days, she can't even get herself out of bed - and she's running out of money. The profits she made from her book Brand New Day have run out, and she needs to find another source of income. Then she meets a guy named Lyle who offers her a hefty fee to come speak at a meeting of a group called the Kill Club and Libby seizes the opportunity, not realizing it will bring up questions and make her finally confront her past.

Libby has never questioned the events of that night, or her own damning testimony which put her brother behind bars. But faced with the members of Lyle's club, many of whom are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby begins to have doubts of her own. She begins to seek out people from her past to find out what they know about the events of that night, including her deadbeat father, her aunt who took her in after the murders, and her brother's friends. Her present-day story alternates with her brother's and mother's account of the last day leading up to the murders (and yes, there are four narrators, but I'm not going to spoil anything by revealing what that's all about.)

Many of us were first introduced to Gillian Flynn through her 2012 hit Gone Girl, and indeed that is what drew me to this earlier novel. Though Dark Places doesn't present the same kind of game-changing twists, it is still very well-crafted and among the top crime novels I've read. I liked the focus on Libby as the lone survivor of a long-ago crime from which she will never really recover, and that despite the sympathy her situation demands she's not someone you'd really want to be friends with. Since she was so young at the time of the murders, there was a great deal she didn't know about what was happening in her family, and Flynn quite deftly revealed those stories to us in the flashbacks just as Libby was discovering them for herself through her investigation. When the truth was finally revealed it wasn't what I would have guessed and I found it quite satisfying.

The audio was very well done - again, I could listen to anything read by Rebecca Lowman, who completely outshone her fellow narrators. They were all perfectly good, and I was happy to listen to all of them, but Lowman is my favorite and few others can compare to her as far as I'm concerned. I'm always a bit worried about listening to crime rather than reading it - I'm always afraid I'll get distracted and miss something important - but this was a great choice. I'll consider audio again for the next book by Gillian Flynn, an author I'll definitely continue to read.

Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)

On the morning of Nick and Amy's fifth anniversary, she got up early and made crepes for their breakfast. Then she disappeared - Nick returning home later to find overturned and smashed furniture in the living room. He calls the police to report her missing, but during questioning evades certain topics while ignoring a mysterious caller who keeps ringing his phone. Soon, eyes turn towards Nick as the prime suspect. In alternating chapters, we learn their story - or what they want us to know of it - through Nick's evasive narration and Amy's revealing diary.

Their marriage, we quickly learn, was fraught with tension. Amy struggles between being a "cool girl" who doesn't nag her husband, and wanting him to have some consideration for her. She makes fun of the "dancing monkeys" - men who she feels do whatever their wives tell them - while trying not to be upset at Nick's failure to show up when they had plans. Nick harbors his own resentments and frequently seems more allied with his twin sister than his wife. The more we learn about their relationship, the more the plot is complicated, and the more terrifying the story becomes.

There are so many delicious little secrets unveiled one by one throughout the book, changing the game again and again. One of the best things about it was that even though a lot of the story is told first-person by Nick, you just can't tell whether or not he's guilty - I turned back many times to re-read passages that could be interpreted in different ways. Amy too, is hard to get a handle on. Just who is this woman?

Just as compelling as the story is its backdrop, a town economically destroyed, full of the bitter unemployed. An abandoned mall full of squatters is an eerie and almost dystopian touch. This bleak setting only added to the unsettled feeling that grew steadily with every page.

This brilliant psychological novel is a page-turner, manipulating the reader the way the characters manipulate each other. I sort of felt like I needed to see a therapist when I finished, but I mean that in the best way possible.