Dark Places
Gillian Flynn, 2009
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A broke, mean survivor of a famous family massacre starts asking who really killed them, and the truth is uglier than the tabloids. A sour, funny first-person voice carries you through dread and family grief at a steady, tense pace.
Feels like dread and melancholy. About morality, family and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy crime stories with a mean, wounded narrator and a sharp eye for small-town morality. The opening pages include explicit suicidal daydreaming, and the whole book stays bleak, so it may not suit you when you want warmth.
Why read it
Flynn's second novel gives you a family mystery told by someone who is not nice and not okay, with wit sharpening the dread.
A page from the book
Even in a suicide fantasy, someone still has to make the coffee.
It was miserable, wet-bone March and I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter. “Did she want to be buried or cremated?” people would ask. “Who should come to the funeral?” And no one would know. The people, whoever they were, would just look at each other’s shoes or shoulders until the silence settled in and then someone would put on a pot of coffee, briskly and with a fair amount of clatter. Coffee goes great with sudden death. Gillian Flynn.Gillian Flynn worked as a journalist at Entertainment Weekly for ten years before publishing Sharp Objects; Dark Places was her second novel.
Books that feel like this
More by Gillian Flynn
Το κορίτσι που εξαφανίστηκε
Gillian Flynn, 2012
Αιχμηρά αντικείμενα
Gillian Flynn, 2012
A reporter returns to the small town she fled, sent to cover two missing girls, and finds her own family waiting with its teeth bared.
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn, 2012
A marriage goes wrong in a Missouri river town, and every account of it is suspect. Read it for the voice, the fury, and the cool-eyed dread.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Dark Places for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy crime stories with a mean, wounded narrator and a sharp eye for small-town morality. The opening pages include explicit suicidal daydreaming, and the whole book stays bleak, so it may not suit you when you want warmth.
- What is Dark Places like?
- A sour, funny first-person voice carries you through dread and family grief at a steady, tense pace. Feels like dread and melancholy. About morality, family and society.
- What should I read after Dark Places?
- If you liked Dark Places, try We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson), Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter) and I Am Number Four (Pittacus Lore).
A taste of the feed
A self-portrait in dislikes, lucky fingers, and one very flat sentence.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle · Shirley Jackson
What a woman weighs before she turns a man down.
It’s the truth. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don’t like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there’s no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can’t walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it’s easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.
Pretty Girls · Karin Slaughter
Sometimes the missing happens with the person still in the room.
That’s the worst way to miss somebody. When they’re right beside you and you miss them anyway.
I Am Number Four · Pittacus Lore
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed