Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. Dark Moods.

Reading is something that I still make the time for. The other vices would be watching movies, listening to music and writing something. All three have been rather hit after Ana babush’s arrival. While I was pregnant with her, I had difficulty reading even a mild thriller. I don’t know…it had something to do with the bile rising up, threatening to bring with it my breakfast or lunch and I also had an overwhelming desire to hold on tight to the little one growing in my womb. So I got into mild reading – Chicken Soup for the soul for new moms (a gift from a group of well-meaning friends), Mills and Boon, random books and articles on pregnancy and child birth, Susan Elizabeth’s book/s which I can read and re-read a million times. I tried and failed to read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and also Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but I hope to pick up both in the near future.

Anyway, after a long time as I browsed in Madras Gymkhana’s Library, I happened on Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places and I picked it up without a second thought. I had liked the dark, revenge-drama of Gone Girl and I knew at least she could weave a good thriller.

I wish I could write that I hated Dark Places. But I wouldn’t be truthful to that part of a dark place in my heart which I did not know even existed, if I said that.  Why else would I have read the entire book with my stomach twisting in knots and in some places getting utterly bewildered by the mechanisms of a dark mind, but still finishing the book as if my life were depended on it? When you decide to read this book, (yes, I said ‘when’ and not ‘if’, because you should read this book), do so with the knowledge that human beings are weak and are capable of unthinkable horrors. Maybe you know that already, but believe me, the truth will still hit home. And if you are a pregnant to-be mommy – stop right there. You can read this book, perhaps, in the very distant future. All this might lead one to believe that I did not like the book. Oh, but I did. Very much. And I don’t seem to know what to make of the fact that I liked the book.

A quote from the book - Dark Places

Anyway, Gillian Flynn is at her best again, conveying the dark moods and the bleak lives of the people of Kinnakee (a fictional town), Kansas. The book is dark, morbid and chilling in some places, and it will grip you to the very last page. Every character in the book has been etched out in great detail, especially the lead characters – Libby Day, her mother, Patty Day and her brother Ben Day. I think it is an art to be able to trace people’s strength and weakness and their dark thoughts in such detail and with such clarity. That’s why the book is so riveting perhaps.

The chapters move between present day Libby’s life and to that particular day in her life when her entire family was murdered by, she believes or is led to believe, her brother Ben Day. She is seven years old at that time and manages to escape the murderer, but the person who is left behind in her body is best described in her own words in the very first line of the book – “I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at the belly and it may slide out, meaty and dark…” 

Whew. You are hooked in right there. The rest of the story traces her journey to find the truth about what happened on that fateful night in 1985. The big reveal in the end was actually a paisa vasool moment for me and though I did have inkling about the murderer, I must say I was surprised at the end.

A definite read.