The Novels of Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, and Dark Places

Gillian Flynn likes to write dark, weird stories. And I love her for it.

Last year I read Gone Girl because, well, who didn't read Gone Girl last year. I'm not usually one to read something just because everyone else has, but my mom kept telling me to read it so I eventually gave in. I was not disappointed. I spent my formative years staying up late reading my mom's copies of Stephen King and VC Andrews novels, and my fondness for those authors is probably all you need to know about why I've become a big Gillian Flynn fan. Recently I went back and read Flynn's earlier novels, Sharp Objects and Dark Places.

These mini-reviews are in the order in which I read them. Also, some very minor spoilers.

Gone Girl
I read this book almost a year ago, so my memory is a little foggy. What I do remember is that this book has a super dark ending. The bad guy wins! Several of my coworkers who have read this book complained that they didn't like the ending because they felt that the characters deserved some sort of comeuppance for all the terrible things they do in the book. To which I say, eyeroll. Okay, I guess that's not really something that gets said. My library's book club read Gone Girl this month and a coworker had to cover the meeting despite not having read the book. She told me that the only thing she knew about the book was that it had a bad ending. My response was that the ending wasn't bad, it was perfect. It just wasn't a happy ending. If you're looking for a happy ending where justice is served and everyone lives happily ever after, it's probably  a good idea to just stay away from anything Gillian Flynn has written.

Sharp Objects
I don't think this was my favorite of Flynn's novels, but it is a super fast read. I tend to get distracted really easily and not finish what I started reading, so any time I breeze through a book in a week's time I have to give the author credit. Sharp Objects is the story of a Chicago journalist returning to her hometown in Missouri when a girl goes missing just a few months after another girl was murdered. Serial killer in a small town, you know the drill. This was Flynn's first novel and I don't think it's as well structured as her other two. The big reveal isn't that surprising and happens sort of abruptly. But it is a good read and I would recommend it if you're in the mood for a mystery with disturbing family dynamics.

Dark Places
Speaking of disturbing family dynamics, this book pretty much takes the cake. You'll have to read the book yourself, to say more would be way too spoilery. In January 1985, Patty Day and two of her young children are brutally murdered in their home. The youngest child, Libby, manages to escape through a window and survives. Patty's teenage son Ben is arrested and convicted of the murders. This book is told from alternating viewpoints, Patty and Ben in 1985 and Libby in 2009. In the present day, Libby is realizing that the testimony she gave in 1985 when she was 7-years-old may have been coerced, and maybe her brother didn't kill her family after all. The book then shares Patty and Ben's viewpoints on the day leading up to the murders. It's a really interesting way to tell the story, and I really like the way the exact same event is interpreted differently depending on who is the viewpoint character for that chapter. However, I think this alternating structure is why it took me longer to finish this book. When a chapter ends on a cliffhanger, I'll often pull the "just one more chapter" thing to find out what happens next. But when a chapter ends on a cliffhanger and I know I'll have to read at least one additional chapter about completely different events before I can find out what happens, it's a lot easier to say "whatever, I'll just pick this up tomorrow night." It's especially bad if the cliffhanger is at the end of a Patty 1985 or Ben 1985 chapter. The book is essentially structured as Libby 2009, Patty 1985, Libby 2009, Ben 1985, Libby 2009, Patty 1985. If I want to find out what happens next to Patty, I have to read three more chapters. I mainly read in bed, so that's a lot to ask of someone who is falling asleep. This is a complaint that's really specific to me and my reading style, I still highly recommend this book. I think I actually like it better than Gone Girl.

Quarter Life Crisis (Literary Coping Mechanisms)

New Year’s Day found me watching football with my husband, sister, and parents in my aunt’s (recently renovated) basement. Surfing 2013 best of/worst of lists on the web brought me to this reading list for your quarter-life crisis . At 29 I may be a little late for my crisis, but I’d hate to miss it. And of the 29 books on the list I’ve already read (and liked or loved) seven. Seven!! How random, no? So I added the whole lot to my goodreads list and jumped in. Here’s progress as of the last day of January:

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayer  Loved this. Strayer is the no-longer-anonymous “Sugar”, advice columnist atThe Rumpus. The book is a collection of her articles slash sort of a memoir? Anyway, she totally reaffirmed my faith in humanity, in myself, in the kindness of strangers and the possibility of transcendence. But, like, without being too squishy about it. Basically it made me feel like the movie I Heart Huckabees makes me feel which is really nice. A super lucky first pick from the list, it made me hungry for more.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn  Captivating. Everything and everyone in this novel is so f*cked up. I think I’d been held back a little in my fiction consumption, sticking to older classics and favorites from younger years. The brutal description of grown people with grown (granted highly unlikely) problems was refreshing and reassuring. I’ve got a sense now what the “quarter-life crisis” book list is bringing to the table and I like it.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri  Pretty good read about a first-gen American with Indian parents straddling old world expectations and new world dreams. Spoke to my need to please my family in a sort of blind, subconscious loyalty way. Apparently teen rebellion is just a detour on the way to still not establishing your own identity. Or maybe that’s just me? I don’t know, blame it on the quarter-life crisis.

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut  Memoir about a perpetual traveler’s early adventures. The author speaks about himself in both the first and third person in a way that really added to the narrative – how he both identifies with his younger self and also doesn’t even recognize that young man. I didn’t love this one, but the suspense in the last third of the book pulled me through it. The author’s struggles to save a suicidal friend cut pretty close to home, and made the book feel really honest to me. Maybe too honest? A bit painful really.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke  Literally a handful of letters Rilke wrote to a young poet who struck up a correspondence with him in 1903. Loved, loved this collection. Rilke is like the mentor you’d always want. Distant and objective but almost unbelievably compassionate. A strong proponent of solitude. Which I think I could use more of. The introduction was probably 20% of the book, but valuable to set the scene. I read the whole book in an evening and am considering putting it into some kind of annual rotation. Maybe a nice book to read every New Year’s Day? Or a birthday tradition? After 15+ years of watching Sixteen Candles on my birthday it may be time to step it up. 

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollingsworth  Enjoyable novel about a young, middle class gay man in London in the early 80′s. He’s found lodging in the home of a wealthy MP, the father of a school friend. The book intimately follows his first romances, his inevitable spiral into the coke-fueled, secretive gay life of the young and rich at that time. Then AIDS. Because that’s the 80′s. In a way it was all a bit predictable, but the up-close experience of the protagonist keeps it from feeling stale. I liked the book, but I was kind of depressed by the end. Which did not put me in the right frame of mind for…

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy  The blurb made this sound like a sort of self-help book spoof full of surprisingly helpful insights. Unfortunately it seems to be… philosophy. Not my genre. Like, at all. I’m about 2 chapters (not that it seems to have chapters?) and I’m going to put it to the side. On principle I want to finish the entire list honestly, but this one might have to provide filler in half-hour segments between the rest of the selections. Unless it really turns around. I think I may not be deep enough for this kind of self-evaluation. Or perhaps I just haven’t had enough therapy. Regardless this one isn’t doing it for me.

And so, onward!

p.s. I’ve previously read Hyperbole and a Half, Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, The Marriage Plot, Love is a Mix Tape, Of Human Bondage, The Good Earth, and The Joy Luck Club. Interestingly the first three in the last 18 months, the fourth and fifth roughly seven years ago and last two over ten years ago. If I’m still enjoying the quarter-life crisis project after I’ve finished the others I may reread the last four with older eyes more wisdom.

p.p.s Full disclosure, this entire thing was also posted at Go Mighty. With which I've finally initiated contact after 4 months of thinking about it.

Catching Up

I don't know if you know this, but working full-time while also going to grad school is pretty time-intensive. Add a commute and trying to have a life and basically all my blogging time is gone. I wish I had more time to sit and write about what I've been reading, because I have a lot to say about the Hunger Games trilogy and The Great Gatsby and Chopsticks, but I just don't have the time or the brain power to dedicate to writing good reviews. If you want to keep up with what I'm reading, follow me on goodreads.

Here are some recent books I've read:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
The Walking Dead vol 1 (graphic novel)
Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing proper reviews. Probably not.

Catching Fire mini-review

I'm planning to do a review of the whole Hunger Games trilogy soon, but for now here's a conversation I had with my cousin Morgan about the second book:

Me: I'm warning you ahead of time, what I'm about to say is really nerdy.
Morgan: Okay...
Me: I kind of feel like Catching Fire is the Empire Strikes Back of the Hunger Games Trilogy. It has the darker, cliffhanger-y ending where you have to go on to Mockingjay, just like you have to go on to watch Return of the Jedi. And Empire is my favorite Star Wars movie and Catching Fire was my favorite Hunger Games book, so they have that in common too.
Morgan: You know, you said it was gonna be nerdy, but you really outdid yourself there.

Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi

I'm a sucker for a haunted house story. I love nothing more than curling up with a book that makes me quiver at every strange bump in the night. A marker of a good horror novel is if you have to stay up late watching sitcoms on Netflix in order to take your mind off the scary stuff so that you can get some sleep.

Floating Staircase is the story of Travis Glasgow, a horror writer who moves into an old, run-down house with his wife. Haunted hijinks ensue. Malfi truly has a talent for describing those creaks and thuds that could just be the house settling... or could be something more sinister.

Throughout the course of the book, Travis investigates the death of a young boy who drowned (or did he??) in the lake behind their house the summer before the Glasgows moved in. Through his investigations Travis also has to confront his guilt over the death of his younger brother, who drowned in a lake when they were kids. So not all the ghosts of this book are of the paranormal kind, there are the more common ghosts of human memory as well.

For the most part, I would recommend checking out this book if you're a fan of the horror genre. But, be warned that most of the best spooky stuff is concentrated in the earlier chapters of the book. At some point the book shifts away from straight-up horror to a more standard murder mystery. I would have preferred a little more intense spookiness at the climax of the book, but really, when wouldn't I prefer a little more spookiness? I liked this book, but I wish I would have just rented the library's copy, because I don't feel this is going to be a re-read a la 'Salem's Lot.

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle

I know what you're thinking. "I thought Abby was dead or struck illiterate or something. Isn't she a workaholic who's busy neglecting her family and friends? Where does she find time to read?!?!"

Good question. I blame Meg of A Practical Wedding. I went to her book talk (for a completely different book, obviously) last Thursday in Atlanta and took the following day off work. Thus I had an entire Friday with nothing to do other than nurse a hangover. And read as it turns out.

Now, if you've ever consumed more Jack Daniels than is strictly advisable, you know that heavy thinking is not on the agenda for the following day. I wandered around the house avoiding eye contact with my Kindle (home of 2/3rds finished The Count of Monte Cristo) and hoping to find a copy of People Magazine. Instead I snuck up to the "To-Read" shelf and noticed I Love You, Beth Cooper. My husband had purchased and enjoyed it some years ago and I have been not reading it ever since.

So I read it in a day while sipping Perrier and eating an entire loaf of dry french bread. (What? That's a doctor recommended hangover diet.) A quick googling reveals that the author, Larry Doyle is a former writer for both Beavis & Butthead and The Simpsons. This comes as no surprise. The book is quite funny and the teen characters are both angsty and awkward in the best way. Ever chapter starts with a sketch of the protaganist, Dennis Cooverman (The Coove!), who becomes more beaten and brutalized with every scene, and a quote from a classic teen movie. Any book that quotes Lloyd Dobler is okay by me.

It's beyond easy to see why this book was made into a movie. Doyle's television sensibility comes through with vivid action sequences that I imagine translate well to film. I'll definitely be adding this to my Netflix queue. After I saw the movie poster I remembered that the movie stars Hayden Panettiere, but while I was reading I couldn't stop picturing Dianna Agron. Same diff?

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

I wanted this book to be better than it is. When I first heard about this feminist science-fiction novel, I knew immediately that I had to read it. And, yes, I actually read the book instead of listening to the audiobook. This was my winter vacation read.

This book is a retelling of The Scarlet Letter, although I haven't actually read The Scarlet Letter so I can't get too detailed about the similarities between the tale.

In the world of When She Woke, most criminals are not kept in prisons, but instead go through a skin-dying process called chroming. Different crimes get different colors, misdemeanors get yellow, murderers get red, etc. The chroming isn't permanent, it depends on the length of the sentence. Hannah Payne is sentenced to 16 years as a red for having an abortion and refusing to name either the father or the doctor who performed the procedure. Roe v. Wade was overturned after a STI epidemic left a huge portion of the population infertile and extreme right-wing Christians had taken over the government. It cannot possibly be a coincidence that the "Sanctity of Life" laws in the book are constantly referred to as the SOL laws, an acronym that more commonly means "Shit Outta Luck." Pregnant with a married pastor's child? Sorry, you don't have any options because of the SOL laws. It's actually a quite believable plot, and except for a few incidents late in the book, I can totally see this type of future unfolding.

We follow Hannah from the time she first wakes up as a red in the Chrome ward, through her time at a rehabilitation center, then we see her try to reconnect with her family. After that, the plot starts to go off the rails a bit. There is a definite difference in tone between the early chapters and the latter. The first chapters are slowly paced, drawing you in to this story and this world. The last few chapters are really quick, and the characters start acting in ways contrary to their previous actions. I don't want to spoil much, because I would still recommend checking this book out, but I'll just say that there's a sexual relationship in the second half of the book that I have trouble believing. And the ending seems to be resolved a little too quickly and neatly. Those are my biggest complaints about this book.

If you like feminist literature and are looking for a short, quick read, I recommend picking up When She Woke at your local library. It's only 240 pages (according to my Nook), and I read it in under three weeks. And those three weeks encompassed Christmas and New Years, so that's pretty impressive. Had it been a real vacation, where I didn't have work or anything, I probably could have finished this in a day or two.