You Like Ghost Stories?

Thanks to George R.R. Martin, who asked me to write him a story.
-acknowledgements

Gillian Flynn wrote The Grownup as a short story to be published in George R.R. Martin’s Rouges anthology and it was later released as a stand alone novella. The story starts out as standard Gillian Flynn; an unnamed female narrator, who has a twisty past, finds herself stuck in the middle of a chilling battle between a mother, her step-son and a mysterious house.

The Grownup could have benefits from another hundred pages or so. The beginning of the story has our protagonist moving from the seedy world of soft core sex work (hand jobs for pay) to the marginally less seedy world of “aura reading.” She meets a woman, Susan Burke, who believes there is something wrong with her step-son and the old, Victorian house her husband just moved them into where the story takes a turn in the Gothic Horror direction. The book is only 62 pages and once the narrator visits Susan’s house in order to cleanse it the story begins moving quickly- a little too quickly- and then it’s over with an abrupt & somewhat disappointing conclusion.

I hope Flynn decides to expand on this literary kernel and deliver a fully popped novel sometime down the road.