In TV crime procedurals, the first part of the obvious formula includes the introduction of a red herring character, someone who is too obvious, and the detectives will waste a bunch of time trying to stick that person to the wall before finding a breakthrough that leads them to the actual suspect. Gillian Flynn’s version of this is that EVERYONE is obvious. All of the characters have the means and the disposition to have done it, if not the exact motive, but who needs motive when […]
Caution: Do not read this book at bedtime
I pretty much enjoyed Gone Girl, although (like many people), I did not care for the ending. I was on the fence about reading anything else by Gillian Flynn, not so much because of that, in fact I’m not really sure why I was reluctant, although one thing that threw me is that after all the dark twistiness of Gone Girl, she ended the book with an acknowledgements section that read like a high school yearbook dedication. That was the twistiest bit of all for me. […]
Should come with a trigger warning
First of all, I don’t like to throw around the term “trigger warning”, but if you have a problem reading about someone who cuts herself, then stay away from this book. That being said, I thought Sharp Objects was an excellent novel — not quite Gone Girl (this was Flynn’s first novel; Gone Girl, her third), but I can see how her her writing evolved from this to Gone Girl. Now I just need to read Dark Places, which falls in between. “I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. […]
Beautiful girl, lovely dress, high school smiles, oh yes.
It’s a good book, but I wish it didn’t have to go there. There is a spoiler involved in this review, but I put it at the end, so you should be safe as long as you heed my warning. (That first sentence is a link, by the way. I don’t know why they don’t show up as such on the main page, I seem to remember them showing up last year.)