Flynn writes characters that tend to make questionable decisions;
think Nick Dunn in GONE GIRL. Why the hell did he not retain an attorney once
it was discovered Amy was missing or dead. The spouse is always the primary
suspect. And why did Amy sell their townhome in New York, a city she loved and
loathed leaving, to move to a podunk town to nurse her mother-in-law till she
died. Why did she give Nick the money to
open a bar in a Podunk town of all things? Or how about Libby Day from DARK
PLACES who went through money like water through a sieve, without any means of
support. She made one bad decision after another. And in GROWNUP the unnamed
narrator struggles through life making ends meet as a psychic, until she meets
a young woman, Susan, who believes she sees ghosts in the eerie Victorian home
she lives with her teenage son. Once the narrator entangles herself in Susan’s
life, believing to finally found a cash-cow she begins to wonder what she has
gotten herself into. And again, before the book has found its conclusion she
makes a decision that leave us all wondering what the hell was she
thinking. GROWNUP is a short story
repackaged as a novella, and if you are a Gillian Flynn fan you will find it
has the twists that you would expect from a Gillian Flynn book. I am wondering when she will write another
novel instead of re-warming previous works.
