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Gillian Flynn doesn’t mess around
Book Review
By Derryll White
Flynn, Gillian (2009). Dark Places.
“Gillian Flynn is the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre.” – Stephen King
Gillian Flynn announced herself on the literary scene with ‘Sharp Objects.’ It won the British Dagger Award and was a debut for a talent that created a character who carved words into her skin. Flynn carved stark and necrotic images into the minds of her readers.
In ‘Dark Places’ the author’s prose is again razor sharp, and psychically upsetting as Libby Day moves from dank Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns.
Gillian Flynn doesn’t mess around. The story begins as a plague on the landscape of the reader’s imagination with a first sentence that says: “I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.” The story does not lighten up from there. Flynn keeps on pitching curves, surprising the reader with little three-word sentences – loaded with meaning.
She takes the reader to places never before imagined. There is no relaxing with ‘Dark Places.’ The novel is, however, incredibly well written and worth every moment of mental duress. Any serious reader should explore ‘Dark Places’.
Libby Day: “I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.”
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Excerpts from the novel:
KANSAS – Kinnakee had never been a prosperous place – it was mostly struggling farms and optimistic plywood mansions from a preposterously brief oil boom. Now it was worse. The prison business hadn’t saved the town. The street was lined with pawn shops and flimsy houses, barely a decade old and already sagging. Stunned children stood in the middle of grubby yards. Trash collected everywhere: food wrappers, drinking straws, cigarette butts. An entire to-go meal – Styrofoam box, plastic fork, Styrofoam cup – sat on a curb, abandoned by the eater. A scatter of ketchupy fries lay in the gutter nearby. Even the trees were miserable: Scrawny, stunted, and stubbornly refusing to bud. At the end of the block, a young, dumpy couple sat in the cold on a Dairy Queen bench, staring out at the traffic, like they were watching TV.
Libby Day: “The capital of Kansas smells like crazy-house drool.”
DIRECT APPROACH – Never leave a message for someone you really want to reach. No, you keep phoning and phoning until someone picks up – out of anger or curiosity or fear – and then you blurt out whatever words will keep them on the line.
Nietzsche: “It is always consoling to think of suicide. It’s what gets one through many a bad night.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
