Dark Places

by Gillian Flynn

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over twenty years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent. It is 2 January 1985 - the day of the murders. Ben is a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lives. His family is extremely poor, and his father Runner is violent, gambles and disappears for months on end. But Ben does have a girlfriend - a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. Through her, Ben becomes involved with drugs and the dark arts. When the town suddenly turns against him, his thoughts turn black. But is he capable of murder?In a brilliantly interwoven plot, Gillian Flynn keeps the reader balanced on a knife-edge, as Libby delves into her family's past and Ben spirals towards destruction.

• ISBN10: 0307341569
• ISBN13: 9780307341563
• Publish Date: 5 May 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Shaye Areheart Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 349
• Language: English

Reviews

[dpfaef]

unusual mystery. Liked the story, nice little twist at the end.

[empressbrooke]

Well. I can't really say that I liked this book. None of the characters are likable, including the main character. Libby Day's family was killed by her brother when she was 7. By the time she hits 30, she's still 7 inside, her inner growth stunted by the tragedy. She can barely take care of herself, has never had a job, and suddenly the money that strangers donated out of charity over the years is down to about $900. To replenish her bank account, Libby grudgingly agrees to pimp herself out to a group of people obsessed with the Day murders and with proving that her brother isn't really guilty. Along the way, she starts to have doubts herself and the real story unfolds between her present-day sleuthing and flashbacks to her mother's and brother's point-of-view from the day of the killings.

As I said, no one is likable. I wanted to slap everyone, and I found it impossible to feel any sympathy towards Libby despite her trauma. Gillian Flynn is disturbingly good at creating characters who are beyond messed up and irritating, to the point where you start to wonder what sort of inner darkness she harbors (on the contrary, her Author's Notes always make her sound very well adjusted. At the end of this book, she charmingly promises her mom that she will someday write a book where the mother is neither evil nor killed). Nothing about the dark story that's filled with hopelessness and screw-ups made me feel good about reading it. To use a well-worn phrase, it was almost like a train wreck.

I will hasten to add though, a very well-written train wreck, one with fabulous pacing that rushes along at a breakneck speed and refuses to let you take a breather. It gripped me, kept me guessing, and totally sucked me in with the great voice that Flynn gave the unlikable Libby. I almost felt like I WAS Libby, and it reminded me of the single-minded focus that [a:Tana French|138825|Tana French|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1243599201p2/138825.jpg]'s books inspired, where I had to almost physically extract myself from the book once I was finished. I think I liked French's books much better, but I'm very glad to keep coming across such talented women in the mystery genre.

Not a beach book. Not a feel-good story of the year. But damn highly recommended.

[ibeforem]

It’s been a long time since the first two lines of a novel have grabbed me like these did:

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

Libby is not an easy character to like. I don’t think she’s as mean as she portends to be, but at age 32 she’s completely incapable of taking care of herself, expecting to live forever on the kindness of strangers, either through their charity or her thievery. On the other hand, the majority of her family was killed horrifically when she was 7, and how should a person recover from that? I have to admit I warmed up to her a little as she tripped along, trying to piece together what happened that night. The back of the novel tries to sell you on the suspense of "Libby on the run from a killer", but that part happens so quickly that it’s not where the suspense lies. The suspense in this novel is in the shifting narrative between Libby’s brother, Ben, and her mother, Patty. As the story unfolds, I think it ends up being not only about the actual events, but about how little you can know about such a tragedy. I never could have guessed how things actually happened.