Book Description
Gillian Flynn's Edgar Award-winning homage to the classic ghost story, published for the first time as a standalone
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan's terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan's teenage stepson, doesn't help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.
"The Grownup," which originally appeared as "What Do You Do?" in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.
My Review
This was a very short novella-type book. Not a very good story in my opinion. The characters were not really developed and the twists were fairly predictable. The ending was missing too. All in all, a bit of a disappointment!
Gillian Flynn's Edgar Award-winning homage to the classic ghost story, published for the first time as a standalone
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan's terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan's teenage stepson, doesn't help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.
"The Grownup," which originally appeared as "What Do You Do?" in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.
My Review
This was a very short novella-type book. Not a very good story in my opinion. The characters were not really developed and the twists were fairly predictable. The ending was missing too. All in all, a bit of a disappointment!
This was incredibly, hilariously genius. The bluntness of the main character was one of my favorite things about this story.
This brief, stand-alone short story by Gillian Flynn, may not reach the levels of classic horror, but it provides a twisty and entertaining diversion for a few hours.
Like Flynn's longer works, it depends largely on characters (narrators and otherwise) whose lie, subvert, and twise reality like taffy, until no one -- certainly including the narrator -- is quite sure where the truth -- and therefore the peril -- may lie.
There is one major "oops, I gotcha" moment that the observant reader will see, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the character who tells it is the only one twisting the truth here, or that Flynn thought the reader would actually buy into it until she chose to reveal that particular falsehood.
Like Flynn's longer works, it depends largely on characters (narrators and otherwise) whose lie, subvert, and twise reality like taffy, until no one -- certainly including the narrator -- is quite sure where the truth -- and therefore the peril -- may lie.
There is one major "oops, I gotcha" moment that the observant reader will see, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the character who tells it is the only one twisting the truth here, or that Flynn thought the reader would actually buy into it until she chose to reveal that particular falsehood.
Not at ALL what I expected from the author of Gone Girl!!! Very different, and disappointing. D.
62 page hardcover litlle book
A quick read by the author of 'Gone Girl'. Book starts out with softcore sex so my eyebrows were raised right away. Once they get past the main character's 'specialty' job and into the mystery/con part of the novella, it's interesting. A twist ending keeps you intrigued right up to the end; the question is 'who is the real con artist?'
A quick read by the author of 'Gone Girl'. Book starts out with softcore sex so my eyebrows were raised right away. Once they get past the main character's 'specialty' job and into the mystery/con part of the novella, it's interesting. A twist ending keeps you intrigued right up to the end; the question is 'who is the real con artist?'
