Book Review : Gillian Flynn - Dark Places (2009)
Anybody who’s at least mildly interested in movies has heard of Gillian Flynn. The David Fincher adaptation of her novel Gone Girl ended up being nominated for several awards in 2015, including the Oscars, Golden Globes and even the Grammys. Her novel Sharp Objects was also adapted into a pretty successful miniseries by HBO. Dark Places is Gillian Flynn’s most obscure novel. It had its own film adaptation in 2015, which brutally flopped. But it doesn’t mean that the original material isn’t good. It’s just… not quite as good as Flynn’s better knows novels?
Dark Places tells the story of Libby Day, the lone survivor of a family massacre that happened twenty-five years prior. He brother Ben is serving life in prison for killing their mother and two sisters in a Satanic ritual of some sort. That’s the official version. When a basement dweller named Lyle Wirth offers money to Libby to join their true crime-obsessed club and help them solve “the Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee”, she starts doubting herself for the first time in twenty-five years. Maybe her brother was railroaded by the justice system, after all. Or maybe he didn’t act alone.
The first hundred pages of Dark Places are some of the best material I’ve read in 2019. I was told Gillian Flynn was even better than what her film adaptations and it’s 100% true. She can WRITE. The mood of Dark Place kind of out-True Detective’d True Detective if that makes sense? Flynn wrote a novel full of smoky bars, derelict roadside services and tortured souls without coming off as corny or gimmicky. It speaks volumes of her talent because I’ve read at least 100 versions of that novel before and they were all extremely inferior to Dark Places. It’s something you can’t teach.
Another thing about Dark Places that is really cool is Libby. A lot of writers have tried to create a character like her before: a rugged, antisocial survivor struggling with a life-defining tragedy that happened in the past. Most fail at creating it, but not Gillian Flynn. What makes Libby more interesting to me than… let’s say Jessica Jones, is that she’s not trying to prove to anybody that she’s tough. Flynn puts her through a series of burdensome ordeals right away, which made her instantly sympathetic and interesting to me. Her aggressive behavior is always understandable.
So, I’m here chanting the praise of Gillian Flynn like she’s the reincarnation of Dashiell Hammett and yet, I’ve told you in the intro that Dark Places was not as good as Gone Girl or Sharp Objects. What’s the catch, then? Well, it kind of fizzles out after a hundred pages. It becomes a series of discussions with shady, cigarette smoking characters who tell Libby shit like: “Oh you want the truth, little girl? Why do you want the truth now, huh? I don’t think I’m going to tell you anything. Because… well, I don’t know anything.” It gets jarring after awhile.
Dark Places is a pretty good mystery, but it abuses of the “characters withholding information” story mechanic to a point where it becomes a parody of itself for a short while. The ending will also not please everybody because it’s really, really wild. That doesn’t make Gillian Flynn any less of a superior talent, though. Her skill for mood and character are more than enough to make Dark Places a solid, different read. It’s the kind of book you’ll cruise through during your Christmas vacation in one or two frenzied sittings. It’s both memorable and disposable in its own way.
7.6/10
