Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4/5 cats
I was not a lovable child, and iId grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs.
gillian flynn sure does love writing about horrible people doing horrible things. and i sure do love reading about them. especially because she isn’t one of those writers coasting on shock value and “can you belieeeeeve a delicate flower of a woman is writing this??” but she can really tell a story and i, for one, was completely surprised and pleased by the ending of this one.
libby’s mother and two older sisters were murdered when she was seven years old, apparently in some sort of satanic bloodbath masterminded by her older brother ben. she escaped and was instrumental in getting him put behind bars, in one of those “lean on the kid and make them say what needs to be said to convict someone” situations. twenty-five years later, she is a mess – a flat broke kleptomaniac, pissed off at the world, and terrible at any social expectations, until she is approached by a group whose specialty is studying violent crimes, trading memorabilia, constructing alternate scenarios of horrorshows; criminal tourists. and libby pumps them for cash while promising to look into the crime she lived through, and reconnect with her brother and father in order to solve a crime she believes has already been solved.
but it is far from over, man. there are all kinds of things she is going to learn about that night, and about her family, and about her own self.
and it’s going to get creepy.
it is great, great, great. it is not perfect – i personally had some difficulties with character motivation and behavior, but it doesn’t matter because it all works within flynn’s dirty little world, and she manages to convince you that these characters are going to do what they are going to do within their need-spheres, and just because it doesn’t make sense to youuuuu, just be thankful for that, yeah?
it is really chilling stuff – oh, god – remember the frenzy of satanic finger-pointing of the 80’s? there were cults everywhere, right? all the animal sacrifices and the heavy metal music and the teenage killers under the spell of the dark one? and even though none of it ever panned out into anything, that frenzy, that imagined threat was so convincing to so many pearl-clutching mothers. it would be adorable now, except for reading this book, and remembering that actual people were accused and convicted because of half-whispered urban legends. oops.
it’s a great bloody crime story. its pacing is sublime; she always knows just how far to take the reader before switching up the focus to cause the maximum amount of anticipatory distress, she knows how to cover her tracks and how to deliver the most effective kaboom of an ending. and you might not like any of these characters, but you will still sympathize with them, despite your better instincts.
i seem to have run out of gillian flynn books.
more, please.
