Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places & Sharp Objects

A few months ago, I was late in my pregnancy and by the time I put my toddler to bed, I didn't have energy to do much more than sit on the couch and read.  I desperately needed good books to read, so I took to the place everyone goes to for recommendations in babysitters, landscapers, etc... Facebook.  And I'm happy to say, I must have some very literary Facebook friends because the recommendations came pouring in and all of them impressed even me, a book snob.

The first one I read was Gone Girl.  This book is one of the latest crazes in books, I think.  It is a mystery where a young wife disappears and her husband is the main suspect.  As the story slowly unravels, it becomes even more sick and twisted and surprising.  The narrators switch from the wife to the husband, so as soon as you think you know what's going on, another twist is thrown at you.  As a warning, lots of people have been so angry with the way it ends that they wish they hadn't read it.  That wasn't me.  The ending shocked me, definitely, but I like it when an author takes a risk and finds a unique way to end a book, and Flynn definitely does that with this novel.

After reading Gone Girl, I decided to find another one of this author's works, and I found Dark Places.  This was was, indeed, dark.  Much darker than Gone Girl.  Another mystery, this book focuses on the violent murder of a mother and two of her children.  The main suspect this time is the son.  A fourth child survived the murders.  Again, the narrators switch, as does the time period.  The fourth child is living with the stigma of being the only survivor of this infamous crime, her guilt of being the eye witness that helped put her brother behind bars, and her struggle to connect with her father.  This book kept me turning my pages ... well, rolling my thumb across my screen... so much so that one night I was reading the book as I rocked my toddler to sleep.  When she finally fell, I lay her in her bed and started downstairs.  I ended up stopping in the middle of the steps, sitting down, and finishing the book right there.  I couldn't wait to see what would happen next.

For some reason, I thought that was the end of Flynn's works, but I fortunately just discovered Sharp Objects.  After finishing this book, I've decided Flynn has an obsession with seriously messed up female characters!  In this one, a young female reporter is sent back to her hometown - one she has avoided for years - to report on two mysterious murders of young girls.  She stays in her childhood home with her mother, stepfather and step sister.  Her relationship with her mother is strained.  Her stepsister is this troubled 13 year old that gave me nightmares when I thought about my own daughter.  This book stays with one narrator, the young reporter, but stays true to Flynn's style of having several interesting characters, twists and turns, and a surprising conclusion.

Overall, I've enjoyed Flynn's works.  They're easy, interesting reads.

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