Gone Girl was a novel I had voted as the Exclusive Books Book of the Year a few years ago. I’ve never been an avid fan of psychological thrillers – these are books I turn to when I want some “down time”.
But Gone Girl grabbed me by the throat and has never really let me go. It’s a novel that’s haunted me and always found its way back into my conversations about books and that will stay with me for ever. Author Gillian Flynn’s mind fascinates me: how did she come up with the plot? was it a chance thought or is she able to think about crime on another, almost fourth dimensional level? Questions, fascination, leave me awed, I am hooked.
With the release of the Gone Girl movie last month, there has been renewed interest in the novel as well as others written by Flynn.
I’m not a movie person, so I haven’t rushed out to watch it. I’m often very disappointed by the film version after reading a book. But I have been assured by many, that the movie is a pretty good representation of the actual book. Maybe I’ll give it a go.
I was very excited to get my hands on Sharp Objects, Flynn’s debut novel written before Gone Girl, and Dark Places, her latest novel.
I began with Sharp Objects.
The psychologically scarred Camille Parker is the main character in this novel.
“WICKED” above her hipbone, “NASTY” on her knee, “WHORE” on her ankle “GIRL” over her heart.
As a journalist, Camille’s tools of the trade are words.
But for her they mean a lot more – the words she carves into her flesh are a road map to her troubled past.
Camille works for a second-rate Chicago newspaper whose editor, Curry, and his wife also offer her familial comfort and security.
After a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, Camille returns to work and Curry decides a trip back home may do her good. But her home town, Wind Gap, is also linked to the murders of two young girls, that Camille has to investigate.
Since leaving her home almost a decade ago, Camille makes little effort to keep in touch with her hypochondriac mother, Adora. There is also a stepfather she has little regard for and a precocious 13-year-old half-sister, Amma, whom she barely knows.
Camille is haunted by a childhood memory – the loss of her sister Marian – that she has spent her whole life attempting to “cut” from her memory.
Back home now, this tragedy has to be confronted and her words carved into her body haunt her as she grapples with the current as well as past tragedy in Wind Gap.
As she searches for the answers to the violent deaths of these two young girls, Camille finds herself strongly identifying with them.
Dogged by her demons, Camille will be forced to confront what happened to Marian years ago as well as her psychological unravelling after her sister’s death. As she does so, she also begins to get to the bottom of the current story.
This novel had me gripped for four hours on a Saturday afternoon – I just could not put it down.
As with all thrillers, readers have their own thoughts, as they race along with the story, of how it will all end. I was convinced I had it all figured
But almost on the last page, I was left reeling, feeling physically ill – it was a twist in the tale I never expected.
Arbitrary titbits that I thought were important, but which I ignored as mere padding, turned out to be utterly crucial in the story.
Flynn has an empathy for her characters that renders them very real. In this novel she highlights with exceptional skill human imperfection and how it can exist among us, unleashing evil in the most shocking ways.
While I did not find Sharp Objects as compelling as Gone Girl, I could still make out Flynn’s sharp skill and unsurpassed originality already in this first novel.
If I believed that it was merely a coincidence that Flynn was able to create such sharp, incisive stories in her first two novels, her latest one, Dark Places, has firmly put paid to that.
Libby Day is the only survivor of a gruesome event in which her mother and two sisters were murdered in their farmhouse. She fled the farmhouse and hid in the freezing January snow, as her family was slaughtered. She survived – losing only a finger and three toes to frostbite.
Libby was only seven at the time, and it was her testimony in court that was said to have resulted in her brother Ben being sent to prison for life for the murders.
Twenty-five years later, a damaged Libby is drifting, living off a quickly depleting trust fund.
We meet Libby when she learns she is going to have to earn some money for herself or risk being left destitute.
The Kill Club is a secret society that is obsessed with notorious crimes.
The club does not believe Ben is the satanic killer he was portrayed as and are determined to prove it. Angered by their accusation that she was coached into testifying as she did and spurred on by a plan to once again live off her tragic history, Libby begins to delve into the tragedy.
For payment, Libby agrees to get in touch with important role players from the night of the gruesome murders – her father, her brother, her aunt ...
As she reports her interactions to the club, she begins to realise her testimony may not have been as solid as she thought.
As Libby searches for answers, the narrative flashes back to that fateful day – January 2, 1985 – narrated by Ben and Patty, their mom.
Ben is an unremarkable teenager. His absent father and harsh life on the farm stirs an all-consuming rage within him.
He is intrigued by Satanism, heavy metal, drugs and anything that rails against societal norms.
In other words he is a typical teen boy.
What sets him apart though, is his sensitive side. While he exudes meanness and hatred, his relationship with the young Libby herself indicates a young man with empathy and sensitivity.
However, the pressures of the failing farm and a feeling of isolation drive him towards the socially and emotionally dysfunctional Diondra – the new girl in town.
It is this friendship that sets his world on a collision course with tragedy.
As Libby pieces together the events of January 2, she comes to the stark truth.
Unlike in her previous books, Flynn offers up the twist in the tail earlier – not on the almost-last page. But if you’re expecting a neat tidying up of loose ends, you are reading the wrong author.
Dysfunctionality remains to the end and except for getting to the truth, we are left with little closure.
And I think that is why Flynn is so masterful in her craft. In real life there are no happily ever afters.
My only criticism of this novel was that some characters (Diane, Libby’s aunt, and Trey, shady, dangerous friend of Ben’s) were never really fully developed. Maybe that was deliberate – to enhance the lack of neat and tidy many readers like in such novels.
Nevertheless, this was a jaw-dropping read by an author I have come to respect.