Tag: Gillian Flynn

Day 121: Gone Girl

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Cover for Gone GirlBest Book of the Week!

A lot of people are reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and no wonder! Usually, I would wait awhile to present another Flynn book after just having reviewed one last week, but I couldn’t wait to do this one! If you like dark, twisted plots, and great psychological thrillers with a smidgen of evil humor, this is the book for you.

Nick and Amy Dunne are having some marriage problems. When they met, they were both cool young Manhattanites. He was a magazine journalist and she a quiz writer and the model for a series of Amazing Amy children’s books written by her psychologist parents. Five years later, they have both lost their jobs and moved to a dying small town in Missouri to help his mother take care of his ailing father. With the rest of Amy’s money, Nick has bought a bar to keep himself and his twin sister Go busy. Their relationship has been deteriorating ever since.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving evidence of violence. Of course, Nick is the police’s prime suspect, and it doesn’t help that he hasn’t been altogether truthful with them. The public, galvanized by the Amazing Amy connection, almost immediately turns against him. The investigation turns up money problems and worse. Secrets are flushed out.

Most of the first part of the novel is narrated alternately by Nick and by diary entries written by Amy. Amy seems disingenuous and appealing, almost giddy, reminding me sometimes of Bridget Jones. Nick commits many lies of omission. Here’s a hint. Both Nick and Amy are liars.

Just when we think we know what’s next, the plot twists. The book is completely engrossing and very darkly funny, suspenseful and chilling. Think psychopath, but guessing who that person may be is just one of the book’s pleasures. In the reviews, I’ve seen several comparisons to Patricia Highsmith, and I think that’s about right.

Day 115: Dark Places

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Cover for Dark PlacesHappy Independence Day!

I just got a notice from Amazon that the latest Gillian Flynn book is finally shipping, so in celebration, I thought I’d post a review of a previous Flynn book. Gillian Flynn writes great, dark mysteries about women who have been severely damaged.

In Dark Places, Libby Day is the only surviving victim of a famous crime. When she was seven years old, her entire family was murdered, supposedly by her 15-year-old brother Ben. She survived by climbing out the bedroom window and hiding in the snow.

As an adult, she has been subsisting on the fringes of society, supported by donations made after the crime, sales of family memorabilia, and money from a book deal. But now she is almost completely broke and embittered, with no friends and her only relative serving a life sentence in prison. Although she is an unlikable character, a liar and manipulator, you somehow end up completely identifying with her.

The bizarre Kill Club contacts her. They are a group of amateur true crime buffs, and they want to hire her to investigate the murders. Most of them believe that the seven-year-old Libby lied in her testimony years ago and that Ben was wrongly convicted.

The true story of the murder is told partially in flashbacks, from the points of view of Libby’s mother and her brother Ben. As usual with Flynn, I found this book to be dark, enthralling, and perceptive.

Day Sixteen: Sharp Objects

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Cover for Sharp ObjectsI love dark mysteries with an edge. Two of my discoveries from last year  for this type of novel are Gillian Flynn and Belinda Bauer. My book journal for Gillian Flynn’s first book, Sharp Objects, starts out with “What a terrific book!”

Camille Preaker works for a Chicago newspaper, which sends her to her home town of Wind Gap, MO, because a young girl was murdered and another one has disappeared. Camille reluctantly returns to the home town she has avoided for eight years. Institutionalized for self-mutilation as a young girl, she has learned to resist cutting words into her body and now writes them on with a pen. But as she begins investigating her family problems and her disturbed childhood as well as the murder, she awakens her own demons.

Camille’s mother has never paid much attention to her, although she plays the doting mother outside of the home. Camille’s sister Marianne, who was loved by both Camille and her mother, died when she was young. Now Camille has a much younger stepsister, Amma, a 13-year-old who behaves like an angel at home but is a terrible bully outside the home, hanging out with a bunch of mean girls.

As Camille interviews her old friends and acquaintances, her leads all seem to be turning into dead ends, but the reader’s sense of horror grows. Discovering more of the truth about the murder and her own family, she begins spinning out of control and has difficulty resisting the urge to cut herself again.

Flynn’s writing is fast-paced and efficiently builds suspense. This book is a real page-turner.