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Book Review: The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

Crown, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0804188975

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, and audio.

 

If anyone can write an unlikable woman character and make her seem sympathetic for even a moment, that person is Gillian Flynn. The Grownup is narrated by a con artist who gives hand jobs for a living, and is retiring due to carpal tunnel syndrome.  As a sex worker, she has a client who loves to read and, in a little metafictional foreshadowing to the events that follow, lends her Gothic supernatural tales to discuss during their time together. In her new career as a psychic, she hopes to expand her business into the homes of upper-class women who want their homes “cleansed”.

Enter Susan Burke. While at first Susan is skeptical, she is soon convinced that there is something wrong with her house, and, possibly, with her stepson. Susan is convinced that she has found blood on the walls, that her stepson is disturbed, and that it all comes down to bad vibrations in the house, a former Victorian manor that has been gutted, renovated, and modernized.  The narrator convinces Susan that she can get rid of those bad vibrations… for a price.

Soon, it appears that the narrator may have conned herself into believing the house is haunted. Or has she? Research turns up a gore-filled history on the house, and the stepson, an angry fifteen-year-old, is saying and doing bizarre and threatening things. For the first time concerned for someone else, she goes to Susan and urges her to leave the house immediately. When Susan runs from the room, and her stepson enters, reality really starts bending. The ending of this story is surprising and disturbing, both in what it says about the Burke family and the narrator. Even the last sentence doesn’t seem like an ending as much as the beginning of another twisted tale.

Fast-paced and compelling, The Grownup is a trainwreck from which the reader can’t turn away.  Those looking for a sharp, fast (it’s just 69 pages), unsettling, Gothic tale will find that Gillian Flynn has hit the mark. Recommended.

Note: The Grownup originally appeared as “What Do You Do?” in the anthology Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski


Posted on September 30, 2016 by , Reply

Book List: Schools for Peculiar Children

      

 

Miss Peregine’s Home for Peculiar Children hits theaters this week, and it will be interesting to see how it measures up to the book. It looks cool– click here for a link to the trailer. For me, the letters and the real photographs used, and the scrapbook-type format, were much of what made it intriguing, and I can’t imagine how that will translate to the screen. But the trailers look pretty awesome, so even if the movie doesn’t turn out to be just like the book, perhaps it will stand well on its own.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is far from the first book to be set in a school or home intended for particularly unusual children, though– some really excellent books for middle grade and teen readers exist in this category.  Here are a few you might check out.

 

Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan

Kit Gordy is attending an extremely exclusive, isolated, boarding school. Spoiler: it’s also haunted by ghosts who take possession of the students to create amazing works of art. Nothing could possibly go wrong here, right? This is a good one for tweens and middle schoolers, although, in my opinion, you don’t outgrow Lois Duncan.

 

 

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire LeGrand

This is a disturbed fairy tale of a book. Victoria, a perfect 12 year old in every way, living in a picture-perfect community, has chosen just one friend, the very imperfect, messy, and musical Lawrence. When Lawrence disappears, Victoria goes on a search for him, uncovering some very unpleasant things. As more children disappear, and creepy creatures start invading, Victoria becomes even more determined to solve the mystery. She discovers that the orphanage across the street is actually a deeply disturbing, magically operated facility with the mission of turning all the imperfect children that have disappeared, including Lawrence, into identical, perfect children, Stepford-style. Mrs. Cavendish, the headmistress of the school, is truly diabolical, and the school itself is creepy, disquieting, and disorienting. This one is not for the faint of stomach, but people who liked Coraline  or the more nightmarish writing of Roald Dahl might very well like this. This is Gothic children’s horror at its best– highly recommended, but for no younger than age 10.

Contains: body horror, cannibalism, insect hordes, torture.

 

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Speaking of Roald Dahl, Matilda is surely every book lover’s favorite story of a peculiar child. While her school isn’t specifically for peculiar children, the people who work there certainly qualify as peculiar, especially the headmistress. You can’t help cheering for Matilda as she uses her unusual powers to defeat the sadistic Miss Trunchbull.

 

The Grounding of Group 6  by Julian F. Thompson

What’s a parent to do when a child repeatedly breaks the rules, gets thrown out of school again, or breaks that last straw? You send them to the school of last resort– Coldbrook County School– and then never worry about them again. That’s right, the school will take care of your problem child for you, in a permanent way, while the students are out on retreat in a wooded area full of sinkholes. Nothing supernatural in this book, all the horror is in the way humans treat each other.
I’d wait until high school to read this one– it’s got some harrowing moments. There’s also an implied sexual relationship between one of the students, in her late teens, and her “counselor”, who is in his twenties.

 

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

After the death of her mother, Gemma Doyle is sent from her home in India to a young ladies’ boarding school in Victorian England. Gemma has visions, and her unusual upbringing and uncanny knowledge mean a chilly reception from the other girls. Gemma learns to control the visions so she can visit magical realms. As she makes friends, she involves them in her journeys, but while the girls enjoy the power and escape they have in the realms, Gemma learns there is also a darker side. This is the first book in a trilogy: the other two books are Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing. Recommended for middle school and up.


Posted on September 28, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: Greylock by Paula Cappa


Greylock by Paula Cappa

Amazon Digital Services

ASIN: B0168XVNZS

Available: Kindle edition

Alexei Georg is in an uncomfortable situation: the brilliant and difficult sonata he has claimed as his original work was composed by someone else, name unknown. The sonata, titled October, has won him awards and may now qualify him for a grant to travel to the White Sea in Russia to record the songs of beluga whales so he can write a symphony based on their sounds , which he will be given time to write in the isolated wildlife refuge of Mount Greylock. Standing in the way of his goal are a lack of confidence that reveals itself in mediocre public performances of any other piece of music, and his vindictive wife, Carole Anne, who threatens to reveal the secret to the awards committee when he leaves her. An affair, a conspiracy with his mentor to prevent Carole Anne from revealing his secret, a jealous cousin, and a serial killer on the loose, all complicate events as Alexei attempts to escape to Russia to hear the belugas. All this would be more than enough to stand alone as a mystery, and Cappa writes that she was influenced heavily by Philip Marlowe, but the real story is the story of the music, and what Alexei is willing to sacrifice in order to rise to musical fame. The trope of a deal with dark forces for fame and glory, particularly in the musical world, is fairly common, but Cappa transforms it. Her vivid descriptions overtake the imagination, and at times, especially in her depictions of nature, have an actual physical impact on the reader. Cappa’s setting of a small boat in the White Sea was original and well executed, with plenty of shivers, bringing the supernatural to the forefront, and her prose in describing the beluga whales and the ocean voyage flowed beautifully.

Cappa’s descriptive powers aren’t limited to nature, either. It is really difficult to write a good sex scene without cliches or purple prose, but Cappa completely avoids these traps in writing about Alexei and his love interest, Lia.  Both of them have agency and show respect to each other, and Cappa writes their casual relationship respectfully as well. It’s great to see this kind of depiction of a modern affair written so skillfully. The story is frustrating on some levels, though. First, none of the characters are particularly likable or sympathetic. Mostly, they are self-centered and manipulative. While Alexei and his love interest, Lia, are well developed, Carole Anne is a caricature, and the police detective on the case of the serial killer is seen only perfunctorily, through the eyes of Alexei and his cousin, who view her with contempt. It’s also difficult to understand the motivations of many of the characters. For instance, Lia, who has known Alexei only casually in the past, chooses to stick with him after she’s threatened at work by Carole Anne, and decides to drive hours to visit him at the isolated Mount Greylock after multiple warnings that he is the primary suspect in the serial killer murders. Finally, I feel that the two storylines, of the more prosaic serial killer murders and the Gothic “deal with dark forces”, could both be stronger as stand alone stories. In particular, the supernatural story left a lot of questions hanging.

Despite any of the issues I had with Greylock, its descriptive powers, insight into both the power of music and the power of nature, and Cappa’s original treatment of what can be a fairly tired theme, aren’t noticeable once the reader is into the flow of the story, and it is well worth the time of any reader who wants to be swept away into an atmosphere where nature, humanity, and the supernatural combine to create both sublime terror and beauty. Recommended.

 

Posted on January 24, 2016 by , Reply
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