Dark Places by Gillian FlynnMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
While I think an author's books should be evaluated independently of each other, it's going to be hard for me to not compare Gillian Flynn's novel Dark Places to Gone Girl. While Dark Places was actually written first, Gone Girl achieved wider popularity including being adapted into a film first. Both books are set (at least partially) in Missouri, and both feature extremely twisted and dysfunctional characters as well as suspenseful plotting. Although I thought that not all elements of Dark Places fully came together (certain plot elements' connections were never explained as more than not-so-believable coincidence), it was still a sick and yet addicting read.
But be warned: Dark Places visits some truly "dark places." The content includes poverty, child neglect, general family dysfunction, alcoholism, drug use, homelessness, bankruptcy, stripping and prostitution, rumors of child molestation...oh, yeah, and devil worship. I didn't love that Flynn included the devil worship, but clearly she was trying to explore the darkest sides of humanity and the places that yearning for belonging and lust for power can take a person. Although the title "Dark Places" refers specifically to the regions of narrator Libby's mind she visits when she thinks about the murder of her family, virtually every character in this novel is well acquainted with dark places.
Libby Day is the sole survivor of a murder that took her mother and two sisters in 1985. A seven-year-old at the time, she testified that her 15-year-old brother Ben was the killer. Twenty-five years later she is contacted by a man from "The Kill Club," a secret society obsessed with crimes. They are convinced Ben is innocent and enlist Libby to help them free him. Libby, motivated by the promise of financial reward, agrees to help them, although it means revisiting her terrifying history.
Libby is not a likeable narrator - she is a moocher and a thief, hungry to profit off of her tragic story - but there is something refreshing about her character, which is far more believable than the angelic, heroic survivor that the public views her as. As for the "Kill Club," they are a disturbing yet fascinating sub-culture that I wish Flynn had explored further; this group of obsessed misfits is cast as freaks, but they seem to be reflective of a society that eats up true-crime stories, namely American society at large.
The novel is told in alternating points-of-view, switching between present-day Libby and her brother and mother, Patty, on the fateful day of the murders - January 2nd, 1985. The plot is tightly paced, with the events leading up to the murder spanning less than twenty-four hours. Flynn's use of multiple perspectives shows just how different people's understandings of the same situation can be; significant details are described multiple times through the eyes of characters with disparate knowledge.
As with Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn is a master of setting and tone here. The Kansas farm town where Libby grew up is not idyllic but bleak and foreboding, and the places Libby visits in her search for the truth are equally seedy. There is a sense of desperation in the lives of both the poor Day family in 1985 and present-day Libby.
As noted above, I definitely felt that there were plot areas that never came together, and the final twist of the novel just wasn't quite as shocking as that of Gone Girl. That being said, for all the darkness of Dark Places the book ends with a slight note of hope that wasn't present in that other novel.
Comparisons aside, Dark Places is a masterful book in and of itself. But it also shows the extent of the twisted brilliance in Gillian Flynn's imagination. I'll be reading her debut Sharp Objects next (going at her books in reverse-order), and I hope she'll keep writing.
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