New Books Review

Book Review: Dark Places (Wheeler Large Print Book Series) (9781410417756): Gillian Flynn: BooksBrutal, Evocative Murder Mystery, Deftly Plotted and Utterly Fascinating,

By D. Summerfield (Missoula, Montana) -

This review is from: Dark Places: A Novel (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

Libby Day was seven years old when her mother and two sisters were massacred in a blood-soaked home invasion dubbed by the press as “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” It was Libby’s testimony which put her then-fifteen-year old brother, Ben, into prison for the rest of his life for the heinous murders.

Now, it is almost twenty-five years later, and Libby, depressed, angry and broke has agreed to attend a meeting of the Kill Club, a strange conglomerate of people obsessed with famous murders. Some of the Kill Club members have become interested in the murders of Libby’s family because they are convinced that Ben has been wrongly convicted. After meeting with the Kill Club, Libby, although still sure that Ben is the murderer, decides to try to make some cash from her family’s grisly history by charging the Kill Club members to interview people who might have further information about the murders.

In hauntingly compelling prose, this wonderfully talented author deftly unfolds the story of what really happened during the early morning hours of January 3, 1985, and how searching for, and uncovering, that truth will change the lives of Libby and Ben.

The book is told in an interesting intermittent flashback format, with Libby, tough and damaged from her horrific childhood, narrating the present-day chapters in first-person, while the flashback chapters, told in third-person, describe the actions of several key characters on one winter’s day in 1985.

Besides Libby, the most fascinating character in the book is that of Ben, the awkward, aimless, angry boy, tottering on the brink of manhood. Ben, yearning for the father-figure which he never had, and being raised in a poverty-stricken household by a single overwhelmed mother, surrounded by bothersome little sisters, is such a troubled, unlikeable protagonist. Yet this author makes the reader see the good in Ben and how much he wants to fit in, even as the story moves the angst-ridden teenager inexorably toward the unspeakable crimes which are at the center of the narrative.

This author’s prose style is unique, complex and utterly creative. She is almost Dickensian in her ability to paint a word picture of a situation or a character in a few phrases. For instance, in the first chapter Libby describes herself after the murders: “Little Orphan Libby grew up sullen and boneless, shuffled around a group of lesser relatives…stuck in a series of mobile homes or rotting ranch houses all across Kansas.” When Libby sees her brother Ben for the first time in almost twenty-five years, she views him through the glass at the visiting room at the prison: “He looked so much the same, pale face, that Day knob of a nose. He hadn’t even grown much since the murders. Like we all got stunted that night.”

This novel is a fascinating murder mystery, but it is so much more than that. It is a wise, evocative character study — a glimpse into the lives of people who are lost and are struggling to find their way in a dangerous world. Some never find a path, some show others a path, and some find refuge — which can be either heaven or hell. But all of these people — for better or worse — matter, and their intertwined lives are a lesson to the reader that even the tiniest action may have huge unintended consequences.

Highly recommended.

Well Written, but Too Mean Spirited for My Tastes,

By Thriller Lover (Las Vegas, Nevada) -
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)
  

  

This review is from: Dark Places: A Novel (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

Gillian Flynn’s an awfully talented writer, but I must admit to not being a fan of the types of stories she chooses to tell. While DARK PLACES contains a lot of great prose and some compelling moments, it’s ultimately a rather mean-spirited novel that doesn’t add up to very much.

DARK PLACES is a crime story about dysfunctional people doing nasty things to one another. Its brutally effective, but its narrative power is diminished by Flynn’s failure to provide her characters with any true depth. Instead, she presents a cast of caricatured characters who are for the most part either borderline psychotics or pathetic neurotics. While all these characters are colorful, very few of them rang true to me, and almost all of them are unlikable.

To Flynn’s credit, she does construct an interesting mystery in DARK PLACES, and the novel does succeed as a pageturner. But I found myself deeply let down by the mystery’s resolution, which is based on an almost ridiculous series of coincidences. The ending reads like something that Flynn threw together at the last minute, which is bitterly disappointing given the long build-up.

In short, DARK PLACES is a compelling novel, but one that features a lot of ugly characters and dark situations. If you like novels like Scott Phillips’ THE ICE HARVEST or Flynn’s first novel SHARP OBJECTS, you may enjoy this book a great deal. But in the end, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The Lone Survivor of a Family Massacre Searches for the Killer,

By B. Brody “Fairbanks Reader” (Fairbanks, Alaska) -
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
  

  

  

This review is from: Dark Places: A Novel (Hardcover)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

I thought that Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects: A Novel, had promise and so was hoping to like her second book. The book starts out well. Libby Day is the sole survivor of her family’s massacre 24 years ago in 1985. Libby states that “I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs”. Though she says this about herself, it’s not quite true. She tries to paint a picture of herself as darker than she is. She is a bit coquettish and has a playful side to her.

When Libby was a little girl, her family was massacred and she is the only survivor in her family except for her brother Ben who is in jail, having been found guilty of committing the murders. Libby as an adult has not spoken to Ben for 24 years, since the murders occurred. In fact, Libby is the one who fingered Ben. As an adult, Libby realizes that she is not really sure that Ben committed the murders.

Libby is contacted by the ‘Killers Club’, a group of geeky folks interested in proving that Ben is not the murderer. Libby is dirt poor, having used up her victim’s fund, the money sent to her from folks around the country who felt sorry for her plight. The Killer’s Club offers to pay Libby if she agrees to interview other suspects for the murder. They are intent in getting Ben out of jail and proving him innocent. Libby agrees because she desperately needs the money.

This is where the story starts to fall apart. The chapters are juxtaposed between present and past. Libby’s voice is the one in the present and the past voices fall to her mother, Patty, and her brother, Ben. As we get closer and closer to a resolution of the crime, the story falls apart. It becomes unbelievable and the actions we are asked to attribute to different characters are incongruous to what we have been told about them. We are given shallow descriptions, often caricatured, so that we know little about their depths and complexities. We are just told that they are dark or satanic. It is not easy to suspend belief and agree that all of the information we are given makes sense.

The ending is a cop-out. On top of that, most of the characters are unlikable in annoying and childish ways. I had really wanted to like this book but found myself slugging through it, wading through chapter after chapter. Sometimes it felt like I was watching paint dry, it was that slow.

Flynn has a great way with words. If she could come up with a narrative that matches her talent for writing so that content was as strong as narrative, I believe she could produce a knock-out of a book. Until then, I’ll be waiting for her next one.
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