I'm almost ashamed to admit I read this when I was 14 - snuck it out of my mom's bookshelf and read it under the covers late at night. Can't say I undI'm almost ashamed to admit I read this when I was 14 - snuck it out of my mom's bookshelf and read it under the covers late at night. Can't say I understood a lot of it, and the ending was so out there (for me), so I don't think I got much from the experience. First trashy book I ever read (ummm, stole, really)...and I haven't really read much from this genre since....more
Well, I finished this book in 4 days. This was definitely a page turner, but for me, not in a good way. This was less of an "I can't stop now because Well, I finished this book in 4 days. This was definitely a page turner, but for me, not in a good way. This was less of an "I can't stop now because I really like the story and want to get to the bottom of things" and more of a "This book is so disturbing, if I don't finish it soon, I'm just prolonging my own suffering."
First off: it was well-written enough (although Gillian Flynn has an annoying habit of using "said" way too often...surely she could've referred to a thesaurus every now and then and used other words such as asked, lamented, cried, sputtered, ventured, mused, begged, implied, etc.) and she had formulated a fairly good whodunit. She certainly keeps you guessing regarding the identity of the real killer, even though she left enough clues from the beginning, and for that, I applaud her. Her little switcheroo at the end was entertaining (although not entirely surprising). She also paints both a pretty and a cynical picture of Missouri (having never been there nor known anyone from that state, I wouldn't be able to comment on the veracity of her descriptions). Her character development was above average, paying close attention to her main players and adding some color to the supporting ones. I do think she had a tendency to stereotype, but it wasn't distracting enough for me to dislike the book on this count. If anything, the mystery part of her novel played very much like a TV mystery (if sometimes a tad screechy).
Despite all that, however, the novel itself was disturbing on so many levels. It was a complex psychological narrative dealing with cutting, inferiority complexes, psychological diseases such as Munchausen's syndrome (and Munchausen's by Proxy), and sadism and masochism. In my mind, it would've been one thing to approach these topics as the alarming afflictions they are, to not only inform the audience of their existence and pique their curiosity, but to play on the audience's emotions in a "positive" way (there is such a thing!): confuse them, confound them, elicit distress, frustration and even anger, maybe provoke the audience to look these up in other books/on the internet but then walk away from the story and their research with a little more knowledge but remain relatively unscathed.
But all too often, I felt that every time Flynn wrote about her characters' psychological illnesses, it was meant less to provoke and more to titillate. Whenever she wrote about sex or cutting or even the emotional tortures her characters inflicted on themselves or onto each other, she left me feeling extremely dirty and rattled. I'm neither delicate nor squeamish by any means, but I sometimes felt as if she gained some form of risqué enjoyment from writing in this manner, as if she relished the act of noting down the various debasing acts she described so vividly, so viscerally. Even her detailed meanderings regarding the pork industry made me (temporarily) steel away from bacon, ham and any pork products. Throughout some parts, I almost equated her words as a type of torture porn, only not in film form.
As contemporary works go, I've read worse, and I've certainly read better. Maybe this just isn't my type of novel or genre. Still, I got through the whole thing, but I don't think I'll be journeying through another one of Flynn's novels. I think that as a TV or movie critic, she gives very insightful critiques and I generally like her tone. But if this novel is any indication of the sort of fiction writing she will continue to do, I think I will make a concerted effort to avoid her other works, not because they're not well-written, but because it's just not my cup of tea....more
This started as four excerpts from Glamour's summer reads issues - and I was so drawn in that I had to read the whole book. This is typically not the This started as four excerpts from Glamour's summer reads issues - and I was so drawn in that I had to read the whole book. This is typically not the kind of thing I would read, but read it I did (as embarrassing as that sounds), and I'm glad I did. Total chick lit, but worth it....more
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