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Loading... Dark Placesby Gillian Flynn
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. this was on all accounts disturbing. 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. It was a good thrill that kept me up to midnight on a workday just so I find out what happened at the end. And it was unexpected, which I liked. The characters stayed true, which I also liked, even if those characters were pretty unlikable. I could still find some empathy for most of them. Overall, this was a good, entertaining read. no reviews | add a review
Is contained inAwardsDistinctions
Fiction.
Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl, and the basis for the major motion picture starring Charlize Theron Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer. Praise for Dark Places “[A] nerve-fraying thriller.”—The New York Times “Flynn’s well-paced story deftly shows the fallibility of memory and the lies a child tells herself to get through a trauma.”—The New Yorker “Gillian Flynn coolly demolished the notion that little girls are made of sugar and spice in Sharp Objects, her sensuous and chilling first thriller. In Dark Places, her equally sensuous and chilling follow-up, Flynn . . . has conjured up a whole new crew of feral and troubled young females. . . . [A] propulsive and twisty mystery.”—Entertainment Weekly “Flynn follows her deliciously creepy Sharp Objects with another dark tale . . . The story, alternating between the 1985 murders and the present, has a tense momentum that works beautifully. And when the truth emerges, it’s so macabre not even twisted little Libby Day could see it coming.”—People (4 stars) “Crackles with peevish energy and corrosive wit.” —Dallas Morning News “A riveting tale of true horror by a writer who has all the gifts to pull it off.”—Chicago Tribune "It's Flynn's gift that she can make a caustic, self-loathing, unpleasant protagonist someone you come to root for.”—New York Magazine “[A] gripping thriller.”—Cosmopolitan "Gillian Flynn is the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre.”—Stephen King. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Dark Places is a fabulous journey, not only regarding the storyline, but the way words are used, how commas are placed, and the cadence of the sentences - it all flowed so seamlessly, so real, so unscripted. So many writers, myself included, can get hung up on the properness of grammar, syntax usage, and the transition of sentences - because we are told that is the 'right' way to write. Ms. Flynn wrote Dark Places from her characters' voices without regard to rules and "supposed tos," and she nailed it.
Suffice to say, the writing is what I am most thrilled about, but the plot does not fall short or even come in second place - it too is worthy of much reflection. Dark Places is the name a survivor of her family's murders uses when she recalls what took place when she was seven years old. The book twists from the murders to the present (twenty-five years later), following how Libby, the survivor, is coping while learning the truth about the murders that left her brother sitting in prison.
An outstanding story with excellent writing; both readers and writers will enjoy Dark Places. I will read another Gillian Flynn book. ( )