Dark Places: Will This Satisfy Your Craving for More Gone Girl?

 

After the raging success of the Ben Affleck movie interpretation of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl many turned to the book to satiate their need for more about this dark intriguing story. Yet, now many month after both the book and movie have been long finished, readers are wondering about where they can get more juicy, twisted tales. Many are turning back Flynn’s earlier works to see if they can capture the magic of Gone Girl.

I decided to do the same and read Dark Places, her 2009 novel that was her most recent besides Gone Girl itself. Like her most popular work it shares that same ripped from the headlines feel, the plot involving satanic murders in the 80’s and lone survivors. By doing this Flynn automatically grounds the reader in reality because they feel that heard this sort story before. Yet, the intelligent this about this is she knows that people can not get enough of these sensationalized news stories, no matter how many they have seen before. It is like the literary equivalent of  passing by a car accident, people just can not stop looking at it.

Yet, besides from the alternating perspectives, that is the similarities with Gone Girl end. Going from Flynn’s more famous book to this one, you can tell this was earlier in her career. This becomes most apparent in the lead character of Dark Places, Libby Day and the fact that for most of the book she is pretty unlikeable. It is apparent that Flynn likes damaged, far from perfect characters, but in this book she goes too far with it. Libby is just lazy and spiteful, always looking for a to get money without doing any actual work. Flynn tries to humanize her and explain how her past lead to her being the way she is, but unfortunately she did not do enough of it. You really do not start to feel for her until the end of the novel and even that is because she had go through a whole nother ordeal.

In the end, will this satisfy your craving for more interestingly dark stories like Gone Girl, but like Diet Coke, just will not be as good as the original.