Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Whispers of the Story

Imagine one dysfunctional family waking up one morning and trying to cope with the hardship of life. At the end of the day, three are murdered, one survives and one is the murderer. 20 years later, Libby, the girl who survives goes into the adventure of her life to learn not only that she has a new family member, but that there were two killers.

Are you ready for something dark and twisted?  

Review of Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places takes you and spins you through a rollercoaster of emotions. It is intense, vivid, full of action, drama, and thriller. Just when think now you have some time to breathe it takes you for another spin. Up until the end, the question remains: did Ben murder his family?

Libby Day is a woman battling depression because she went through trauma and she was never let to forget that for a moment. She did not have a personality of her own, but others fascinated by horror made her ‘the only girl who survived her family’s slaughter by Satanists’. The funny thing is that even her brother seems to be doing better in prison, getting a degree, and having visitors and friends.  She accepts going on a journey for money, to see if her brother was guilty or not, but discovers so much more: the fates of those present during her childhood, the horrific mania from the 80’ such as satanic rituals, and how little girls were trained to say what was needed if the grown-ups believed they already knew the culprit. Her brother used to date a psychopath that gave birth and raised another psychopath. She herself goes through a rollercoaster of emotions to find out her brother was not the murderer as she believed her whole life, just a bystander.

Ben is, I must admit, your average teenage boy who never knew any different. It makes sense that he was deeply attached to the woman he had sex with for the first time. I can understand that he hated the fact that he was the only boy in a house full of mean girls because his sisters already seemed to be on the path of becoming royalty bitches and a mother who could not handle her children nor give them a proper education. Those children were all alone and powerless so each did things that gave them the appearance of power. For Ben that meant doing some Satanic rituals, and running away from home with his pregnant girlfriend to try to be a real father. But the moment his sister was murdered, Ben was incapable of moving, the same as when his mother was killed. Even during his trial, he was so shocked that he did not realize that everyone was gaining up on him and that he would be convicted. He decides that by not saying anything he would become a strong man, protecting his girlfriend and daughter. He believed that even as an adult, 20 years later, not realizing, that Diodra had some serious issues and that his daughter would be raised the same way. So basically, he went to jail for nothing, because his daughter still had her life ruined by a woman who was not supposed to be a mother and he couldn’t even be there for his sister.  

The whole Day family is dysfunctional. My opinion is that the whole family was prone to depression and willingly chose not to do anything that would elevate their lives. The father, Runner, was an absent father who appealed to the women in his life for money and had no morals. Even Trey, a teenager who was his drug dealer, had more success than him. Patty struggled with her miserable life leaving the children to raise themselves. She did not get the fact that they needed more than just food, clothes, and a roof over their heads, they needed emotional support as well. She even admits that her sister would make a better mother than herself. Her solution to helping her children was to get herself killed thinking her children would be fine in the end living off the insurance money. But did she do it as a sacrifice so her children could have what to eat, or she chose this method instead of fighting because this also meant a way out for her? Libby also grew up with no desire to fight for a better life, she rather used her story for profit than battle her own demons and get a degree and a job.

But all these depictions of dysfunctional people forming a dysfunctional family are the beauty of the characters created by Gillian Flynn. Each character has something you can hate, love, and relate to. You can’t even be angry with them or blame them because in a way their actions are explained by the trauma they go through. The author did a wonderful job of creating a complex story with deep-flawed characters showing how idleness and refusal to fight led to a tragic event that led to not one member of the family leading a normal life.

Dark Places won many awards such as Best Book of 2009 for Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker’s Reviewers’ Favorite Book from 2009. The novel was adapted into a film with the same title Dark Places in 2015. Charlize Theron does a fantastic job portraying Libby Day, so check out the movie as well.

Happy reading!