Authour: Gillian Flynn
Length: 535 pages
How long it took me to read: 2 days
Grade: B+
What it's about: WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.
NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg.
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.
HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle.
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
The ending is the most important part: At first, I thought the ending was predictable, but at the last minute there was a bit of a twist.
Last word: I'm glad that I was able to read this book quickly so that I didn't have to have this story in my head for a longer period of time.
Spoilers after the jump
This was Gillian Flynn's first novel, so I was not expecting it to be as well written and twisted as Gone Girl.
I was a little wrong, but not much. The people in this book were just as sick and twisted, but they were more blatantly sick and twisted, so there was less an element of surprise. This book was still very well written and full of twists.
The story is dark and there is not a positive happy ending, not that I expected it, so it's good that I was able to read it in such a short amount of time. I tend to live in the books that I'm reading, and being in that weird headspace for an extended period of time is not healthy.
That being said, I love how Gillian Flynn writes. Either she is completely demented, or has had such a healthy, stable upbringing, that she's able to create these severely twisted and flawed characters because she is even-keeled enough to pull these people out of her imagination. I like to think it's the latter.
Camille is a mess, but she knows she's a mess, and she's able to function despite it. I couldn't help liking her - not wanting to be like her, but liking her. She is so real and well written. I cried for her at the end when she cut herself. I'm so glad she had Curry and his wife to take care of her at the end. I imagine either she remained with them for the rest of her life with them acting as surrogate parents and she finally has the parental relationship she deserves, or she spirals into nothingness, goes too far, and kills herself. Either way, this is a brillianly written character.
Man! This woman can write a story!
Last word: I'm glad that I was able to read this book quickly so that I didn't have to have this story in my head for a longer period of time.
Spoilers after the jump
This was Gillian Flynn's first novel, so I was not expecting it to be as well written and twisted as Gone Girl.
I was a little wrong, but not much. The people in this book were just as sick and twisted, but they were more blatantly sick and twisted, so there was less an element of surprise. This book was still very well written and full of twists.
The story is dark and there is not a positive happy ending, not that I expected it, so it's good that I was able to read it in such a short amount of time. I tend to live in the books that I'm reading, and being in that weird headspace for an extended period of time is not healthy.
That being said, I love how Gillian Flynn writes. Either she is completely demented, or has had such a healthy, stable upbringing, that she's able to create these severely twisted and flawed characters because she is even-keeled enough to pull these people out of her imagination. I like to think it's the latter.
Camille is a mess, but she knows she's a mess, and she's able to function despite it. I couldn't help liking her - not wanting to be like her, but liking her. She is so real and well written. I cried for her at the end when she cut herself. I'm so glad she had Curry and his wife to take care of her at the end. I imagine either she remained with them for the rest of her life with them acting as surrogate parents and she finally has the parental relationship she deserves, or she spirals into nothingness, goes too far, and kills herself. Either way, this is a brillianly written character.
Man! This woman can write a story!
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