Review: THE GROWNUP by Gillian Flynn
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
About The Grownup (summary from goodreads)
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the “psychic” visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan’s teenage stepson, doesn’t help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.
My review:
I’ll start by saying that I’m a massive Gillian Flynn fan…. but this book? I’m not even sure what to say.
On the surface, it sounds like it will be great. Psychics… a mysterious woman… a haunted house… a creepy boy… but I just don’t know what to make of it all, and it’s not often that happens.
The imagery and characterisation were both really strong throughout. And I loved that the narrator remained unnamed throughout–in fact, I didn’t even realise she wasn’t named (except for her nickname of Nerdy at one point) until after I’d finished it.
And there were twists. Flynn makes you think one thing, then a character comes along and twists everything, telling you how it should be interpreted, and then that same character tells you a different version of events. And I’m left wondering who to believe. It’s like your back at school, listening to different friends tell the same story but with dramatically different interpretations. And that’s great. I liked it.
But the ending… It’s ambiguous, yes. But it’s abrupt. Soooop abrupt. And I didn’t realise I had reached the ending when I did. There were still 15 or so pages in the paperback left, and I turned the page, expecting more because it still felt like the author was leading up to something even bigger… and well, it stopped. Just ended.
Overall, it’s a quick read. It did manage to surprise me, but I wanted more from the ending. It just felt a bit rushed, and too ambiguous. Like, in a way, I have no idea what I just read. Yet I did enjoy it. So I’m pretty conflicted about this one.
2.5 stars (rounded up to 3 for classification)
