Essay--Gillian Flynn

I’m absolutely in love. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s a wonderful thing. I’ll admit it. I’m absolutely in love with Gillian Flynn. Well, not so much her, but her voice, her damaged characters, and the stories they tell.

Who is Gillian Flynn?

I subscribe to Audible. That means that once a month, I get an audiobook “credit” for my meager fee, and Audible and Amazon spend their time telling me what I should buy. Strangely enough, my own works come up in this list from time to time. Alas…

I was in a rut. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to read, music wasn’t catching my attention, nothing was working. I was bored. I needed a change. I went looking through suspense and, of course, Amazon was hawking something called “Sharp Objects” because the TV series was due out soon. So, wtf, I got the audiobook. Within ten minutes of listening, I was no longer bored. I was keenly interested.

Sharp Objects, if you don’t know the book, is about a journalist who returns to her hometown to investigate a murder. One might think, okay, well this is going to be a normal thing. Oh, boy. You have no idea. The murder is hardly the story.

The story is how damaged the man character is. The fact that she engages in self-harm, is always teetering on the edge of sanity, fighting to prove her worst fears wrong. A history of twisted, unhealthy relationships, dark, cynical views of the world, and the gradual reveal.

I found the story riveting, and the character’s first-person narration is beyond satisfying. It gets under your skin, and you’ll remember some of her lines long after you’ve finished the book. Oh, it was good.

A few months later, I said, well, let’s try another Gillian Flynn. “Dark Places.” Holy. Shit.

“Dark Places” is told from the point of view of an orphan, the sole survivor of a supposedly Satan-inspired murder spree wherein her brother killed her entire family. The main character, permanently mutilated by the frostbite she incurred as a result of the murders, has stumbled through life as a pitied and reviled kleptomaniac and petty thief. As the money from her trust fund finally disappears, she agrees to meet with a Murder Club and help them find the truth about the night her family died.

Now, I said “Dark Places” is told from our heroine’s PoV. That’s not really true. The story is actually told from three points of view. Our main character in the present, her mother in the past, and her brother in the past. Both of those are narrated rather than in first person, but the understanding of their character and the character’s voice is only amplified by switching between the points of view.

Flynn did an excellent job of weaving in present-day revelations to events in the past, which shows us that while the result may be known, the true reasons are a bit more cloudy. The pacing between the three PoVs is excellently done, and while I thought I knew what happened long before we actually discovered the truth, I was dead wrong. Happy to say I didn’t see it coming.

Of the three books I’ve read of hers, I think “Dark Places” is my favorite. However, we haven’t talked about the third, have we?

The third is one you may have heard of. “Gone Girl.” Massive bestseller, made into a movie with Ben Affleck, and apparently did well at the cinema. I didn’t see it. I didn’t read it. Well, last night, I finished listening to it.

What is “Gone Girl?” Psychological horror/thriller/suspense that simply goes off the fucking rails. A man’s wife goes missing, he lies to the cops, and hilarity ensues. Only it’s not very funny.

“Gone Girl” is as much a history of two people as an indictment of being what you’re wanted to be as opposed to what you are. That sounds complicated, but it’s really not.

As with “Dark Places,” we get multiple points of view. One from Nick’s PoV and the other from Amy’s, the Gone Girl herself. Nick’s account is a little confusing at first, and he tosses out references without explanation. There’s a reason for that, and I knew what it would be before we got there. It’s a trick authors use when they want you to get to like the main character before they show you who that person really is.

Funny thing, though. Nick actually says this out loud after the first major revelation. “And now you hate me because I’m not the guy you thought I was.” I love narrative irony.

While he stumbles his way through the confusion of what has happened along with trying to cover up his lies, we get Amy’s diary entries for the past seven years. It becomes fairly clear, fairly fast, that something is very wrong with what we, the reader is being told. Someone in this story is completely full of shit.

“Gone Girl” isn’t so much a mystery as a dissection of the dominance/submission game of relationships, as well as people who pretend to be exactly what their partner desires. Until they don’t.

The last three minutes of the book absolutely horrified me. Not because of blood. Not because of violence. But because you just know that things will turn out as bad as you can possibly imagine they will.

I’ve been talking about plots and characters and whatnot, but Flynn’s way of telling the story, which I love so much, takes a backseat to her use of language. Her characters, especially when stressed, have a tendency to stutter out fantastic descriptive words, new blends of vitriol, and melancholy moments that might be beautiful if they weren’t so fucking dark.

Before I wrap this up, let me say again: I haven’t seen the Showtime series of “Sharp Objects” nor have I seen the film version of Gone Girl. In truth, I’m not sure I want to see either of them. Why? I like the images in my head of these people. I don’t want to ruin the journey I had with them. These books will be that memorable.

Dark Places, Sharp Objects, and Gone Girl are all available at any bookstore on the planet. For those of you who want the audiobooks, I can vouch that the narration is excellent in each one.

Let me know what you think.

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