A review by jbeaty17
The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

5.0

A nasty little noir that bumps up against horror for a lot of the book. I thought all of the overlaps between body, violence, and gender were extremely interesting. I think I enjoyed those aspects of the book when they were more subtle in the buildup to the big final twist that wraps up the book’s argument possibly a little too neatly. It gives probably one of the bleakest pictures of mother daughter relationships since Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016). I think the sense of place is remarkably well developed and the sense of claustrophobic exurban hellscape is well developed and unique. I think there are a ton of interesting things happening in this book but that it doesn’t all of them as fully as they could be. For instance, I think Gone Girl seemed to be having more fun with the form compared to this which reads like a relatively straightforward take on a noir. I think some of the body horror stuff is extremely interesting but lacked some of the disturbing punch of Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) that used some of the same descriptive touchstones to more visceral effect. I also found the book to be unrelentingly bleak with little space for even bitter humor, which worked but meant the book didn’t have a tone of tonal variation and basically begged to be read as one package. Finally, outside of the main three family members, some of the side characters feel underdeveloped as chess pieces to the plot machinations. Overall interesting and exciting mediation on violence and motherhood that I would highly recommend but may not be my favorite book ever.