THEN SHE WAS GONE BY LISA JEWELL

This book made me sick to my stomach.

I’m skipping my usual review introduction: Omg, I’m such a bad reader. I haven’t written a review in years. Blah blah blah.

No. I have to tell you about the physical reactions that flooded through my body with each and every page. Well, maybe not every page. Lisa Jewell’s 2017 novel, Then She Was Gone actually bored me at first. I found myself putting it down and finding excuses to read other books and do other tasks. Then it got good and everything that wasn’t Then She Was Gone was an inconvenience.

What do you mean you bought tickets to the sold-out Barbie movie that I’ve been dying to see? Don’t you know my book just got good?

Jokes aside, let’s talk about the plot. Without spoiling anything, the story centers around the disappearance of a glittering and popular teenage girl named Ellie. She’s blonde haired, well-mannered, and well-loved. She’s likable. Once Ellie vanishes, we stick close to her mother, Laurel, whose thoughts swirl around Ellie and nothing else…for years. She is a shell of her former self until she is awoken. Then things get even more mysterious and sinister and perplexing than I thought possible. Laurel turns into a detective while coming to terms with the neglect she’s shown to her other two children and husband over the years. Eventually, a few other characters’ voices come into play.

In writing this review, I’m realizing I can’t even tell you what made me want to heave without sharing spoilers. We’re gonna have to start a book club, y’all. But I will say that it wasn’t just blood and gore that had me heaving. It was the slow realizations of betrayal; the intimate kind. Everything was too close, too concentrated. A little nauseating microcosm in one London neighborhood.

It all felt real, too. I’ve heard bits of every part of this story in true crime documentaries and news articles. I hate it all. You should read it.

As this is the writer who reads blog, we should talk about the writing. I’m always in awe when a story is all over the place and still makes sense. How does that work, Lisa Jewell? How does that look in your head? We have multiple narrators who tell the story in various ways: present tense, past tense, letter writing, and some weirdly aggressive form of journal writing. I ate it up. It wasn’t just the plot that kept me turning the page, but the need to get back to my favorite character and/or out of a psychopath’s head.

Amidst all of that, Jewell gives us some great writing. I would call her writing style balanced. Easy to read, clear, and laced with some really beautiful lines. Like when Laurel has a moment of self-reflection:

She’s talking in lazy clichés, using words that don’t quite add up to the sum of her disquiet.

p136

Maybe I just really love the word disquiet. Or maybe I liked how Laurel always seemed to call herself out internally because I can relate. Speaking of Laurel’s mind, there’s this bit in chapter 23 after another character shares their feelings:

The pronouncement is both surprising and completely predictable. She can’t process it fast enough and there is a small but prominent silence.

p129

I love how succinct Jewell is here. In two short sentences she says so much about Laurel’s emotional state, her ideas about this character, and gives a peak into the aftermath. The silence will affect them both.

As I wrap up this review, I’m remembering a moment right before the book got can’t-put-it-down good. My partner’s sister saw my book on the counter and mentioned that she’d read it awhile ago. She said something liked, “I can’t really remember much about it but it was really good.” Now that I’ve finished and gone through six stages of nausea, I need to ask her how she’d managed to forget the plot.

This book will stay with me. I’ll probably have the occasional nightmare. If I have a teenage daughter, she may never be allowed outside alone. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll forget on purpose.

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed this read and Lisa Jewell’s ability to stir a world’s worth of feelings within me in 356 pages.

Four and half stars.

Lilith’s Brood By Octavia E Butler

This is my first review since August 2018.

 Do I even know how to write a book review anymore? Did I ever? 

I’m pretty sure my last review of a novel by Octavia E. Butler was mostly a love note anyway. It should be no surprise that this one will be the same. 

Before we teleport into another timeline to discuss the dystopian, soul-shuddering, mind-fuck that is Lilith’s Brood, I want to start on the last page of the novel. There’s a small box about the author that inspired some intense feelings for me: 

I’m in awe of the trail this woman has blazed, proud of her blackness and activism, sad that she is no longer physically on this earth, and determined to live and write in a way that’s at least as vaguely impactful as she has. If I remember my old book review format properly (I don’t), I’m supposed to save my rating for the end. The absolute reverence and adoration I feel for this author and this story outweighs my self-control: Five Stars. 

It wouldn’t be a Writer Who Reads review without me ashamedly revealing the excessive amount of time I took to read this novel. But I have excuses! On top of my super demanding job and somewhat social life, Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is a compilation of three separate stories: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago. At 749 pages, it’s practically three books in one. 

See, great with excuses. 

The three volumes were published separately between 1987 – 1989  and ultimately collected in a now out-of-print volume called Xenogenesis. In 2000, the trilogy was similarly compiled into the Lilith’s Brood collection currently in print. 

Reading these “weird” titles, you must’ve guessed that this is a science fiction novel. Of course! It’s what Butler does and does spectacularly well. The cover of my copy, tattered and beaten, reads: Multiple Award-Winning Author of Kindred and Fledgling. 

Multiple Award-Winning. 

Okay, I’ll stop flexing for Ms. Butler. You get it. 

This novel was a journey. Like most dystopian novels, it’s uncomfortable. It’s tragedy and unimaginable circumstances happening to humans just like us. It’s a cautionary tale, an alert, a call out. This is what happens when humans fuck up. So stop fucking up. 

Where Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian story rooted in realism, Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is dystopian in unthinkably distressing, supernatural ways. 

I don’t mean supernatural as in magic powers or spirits. The most soul-shuddering thing about the supernaturality of Butler’s world is the plausibility. She truly injects the science in science fiction, conveys it so thoroughly and simply and logically that you’ll spend hours educating your friends about the anatomy of an alien species. Share it as fact. 

Holy hell, Butler. 

Once again I struggle to intrigue my audience with a thorough synopsis without including spoilers, but here we go. Broadly, the world ends due to war. We’ve heard this story before; we’ve almost lived it a few times. If it happens tomorrow we won’t be surprised. 

Perhaps that’s why the story starts after the war—after our worst fears finally come to be. Butler allows her reader to fill in most of those blanks, which in itself is a lesson. See how easily you can imagine the end of the world? Stop it with the wars. 

We start with Dawn and meet Lilith, my favorite character. She’s tall, black, beautiful. She’s guarded and responsible, cautious and open, independent but yielding. I want to call her mother or sister. She’s black femininity in all the ways I’d like to express it. If I knew her in real life, I’d be desperate for her approval. 

So Lilith wakes, disoriented, on an alien spaceship. She remembers the war, her family, her losses, but not how she got to the ship. At first she doesn’t even know if she’s really on a ship. Eventually, slowly, the aliens reveal themselves, their wants, their nature and values. 

That’s really all I can share without spoiling anything. 

Adulthood Rites follows a character named Akin, whose background I will not reveal. 

Imago follows Jodahs, a character I relate to in disturbingly specific ways. Queer ways.

Both Dawn and Adulthood Rites were written in third person; Imago in first person. I speculate that this was done intentionally. Perhaps Butler needed the freedom that the third person perspective allows in the first two stories to flesh out the new world being created. Perhaps our first-person character Jodahs’ transformation called for a more intimate perspective. Or maybe Butler was just tired of writing in the third-person.

While we’re talking about writing, let’s dive into a few of the things that made my mouth water while reading. Normally I mark up my books with tons of hearts to indicate exceptionally written lines. However I always seemed to be moving while reading this: on a subway in NYC, a plane to New Orleans, a rooftop pool in New Orleans where a woman screamed, “You’re reading Lilith’s Brood! I love you!” Or a plane to London, a cafe in London. Yes, it has been a journey. A journey without a pen. 

I’m unable to identify one thing I love most about Butler’s writing, but I’ll focus on the graceful balance of it all. Butler never over-writes or rushes to cram everything in at once. The story unfolds, compounds, builds into a rich world that we fully understand because she’s not using big complex words or explanations. See this simplistic explanation of Lilith’s fear as she comes into contact with something otherworldly: 

“She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known what held her back before. Now she was certain it was his alienness, his difference, his literal unearthliness.” 

Lilith’s Brood, p13

Other things Butler does well: juggles a ton of characters, building them through action and always keeping the story moving. Nothing is superfluous. No character is poorly thought out. Each has their own distinct voice. And the dialogue! I have to talk about the dialogue. 

The story is tense, of course. Butler expresses this tension, vulnerability, rage, sadness, conflict, recalibration, and more through her dialogue alone. Characters say things and we understand the weight and true meaning without being told. As seen in Adulthood Rites:

“Give him to me,” Galt said. “I’ll make him talk.”

“He’ll talk when he gets ready,” Iriarte said. “Hell, I had seven kids before the war. They’d talk all the time until you wanted them to.”

“Listen, I’m not talking about baby talk!”

“I know. I believe you. Why does it bother you so?”

Lilith’s Brood, p341

There are barely any dialogue tags or text outside of the dialogue here, but clear emotion, tension, and significant characterization. 

Okay, I’ve been patient. Can we talk about sex now? 

When I mentioned talking to my friends about alien anatomy, you had to know I meant sex. I meant that I needed to talk to someone—in this example, my podcast co-host, Trapper—about alien sex. 

And, honestly, all I did was confuse him and myself. I look forward to confusing you as well, as I try to explain how and why I’m enraptured with the way Butler expresses something that is pleasurable, sexual in nature, but maybe not always sex? 

I don’t know! I don’t know! I love it. 

Avoiding spoilers, please read and appreciate this short and breathtaking interaction between nameless individuals: 

Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savouring a few more moments wholly together. 

Lilith’s Brood, p162

And this excerpt from Imago:

“… the rhythm of her heartbeat, the rush of her blood, the texture of her flesh, the easy, right, life-sustaining working of her organs, her cells, the smallest organelles within her cells—all this was a vast, infinitely absorbing complexity.”

Lilith’s Brood, p678

The intimacy Butler explains in numerous skillful ways is not sex as we understand it, but it is pleasure. She used that word a lot: pleasure. It is elegant and transcending, attentive. I love how she writes these scenes. I love it and I don’t understand it fully. I don’t think I want to. How tantalizing. How grossly romantic. 

As this review comes to an end, I feel compelled to speculate on the overall theme. Butler built a whole species, an entire reality and potential future. 

Why did she do it? 

There’s something referred to as the Human Contradiction in the novel, which is the unspoken but thoroughly felt tension between impressive human intelligence and the innate deceit, jealousy, and deception that we cannot seem to shake. 

If Butler simply wanted to point that out, she succeeded. Although I go back and forth on whether she’s making a helpless observation or calling on the human species to change, to improve. 

In the end, I’m glad to say that I have a lot more Octavia E. Butler fiction to read. Butler seems to honor her connection with the story and the reader above any rules, natural or otherwise. It’s this attention to detail, this obvious passion, that has fully pleased me. 

Again, Five Stars. 

The Writer Update: Kid

I fought with myself about this one.

This entire blog is about the writer who reads, not the writer who writes. If I wanted to post about writing I would have to make a Writer Who Writes blog.

I had that “intelligent” thought and kept my writerly updates to myself and my 200 or so Facebook friends for months. Then, one day—today, ten minutes ago—I decided, as the Writer Who reads who hasn’t read a whole book in months, that nobody needs two blogs (read: no one has time) and that, really, I needed to post something on this blog before it gets stashed under a Vine compilation, tucked behind a meme, swallowed by the rest of the internet, and forgotten altogether.

Now lets get to the juice.

Back in March I got word that my flash fiction piece “Kid” was going to be published in the Crack the Spine online journal. It would also be considered for print later in the year. I bounced around (embarrassingly excited) until it was published in April. I think a lot of my excitement was actually shock, a why the hell are they publishing this and not that kind of feeling.

I can’t count how many rejections I’ve gotten for my ultra time-consuming short stories and novels that have been edited, rewritten, edited, and prayed over (joking…maybe). Yet this little two page story that I wrote on a whim—in less than an hour—beat out the others?

I know what you’re thinking: Shut up and be happy. So I’m going to shut up and, I promise, I’m happy.

 

Read “Kid” here.

Expect a book review soon.

Be happy too.

 

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

My next review starts in a Denver airport, or maybe it was Houston—it doesn’t matter.  I was alone in an airport bookstore clutching onto a box of flu medicine, a water bottle and the ability to stand, and I decided I needed a book. Though I was returning to Seattle (after a luxurious holiday back home) with no job and a heap of bills, I bypassed the self-help books and gravitated straight to a glowing black-and-white cover where a little girl belonging to another time, stood eerily.

Peculiar

A slight shadow beneath her feet caught my attention. The girl was levitating.

“That’ll be $14.68, hun,” the sweet lady in the Denver/Houston airport said. And thus began my desperate, hungry, stuffy-headed experience with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Ransom Riggs is the author of this dark twist of fiction, and he’s gotten some rather extraordinary recognition for the novel, which was released by Quirk Books in 2011. Peculiar Children (yes, it’s a nickname) made the #1 New York Times Bestseller List, was called the next Harry Potter by CNN, and was referred to as “Tim Burton-esque” by USA today.

I believe that’s enough praise for Mr. Riggs.

Excuse me, my jealousy is showing.

To get to the base of it, this book is an experience. From the dark patterned pages that introduce each new chapter to the photographs laced throughout, supplementing the story—but not supporting it—this book is a gold mine. No, literally, I felt like I was digging for gold. With the dusty confusion of reality trying to ground me, and the shimmering draw of fictitious peculiarities attempting to pull me into a delicious new world. Every bit of gold, every detail, was vital to the story;  oddities didn’t exist in the novel merely to supplement the chilling mood. And for that, I was grateful for each one.

Something I wondered continuously while reading, however, was if this book was meant to be Young Adult. Our focal character, sixteen-year-old Jacob, is an interesting kid who has a good deal of graphic, traumatizing encounters, but is he interesting enough to keep my adult attention? From a first-person perspective? I asked myself this as I swallowed the first half of Peculiar Children  waiting for my flight. Then I realized that I had swallowed the first half of the book. Then I stopped asking dumb questions. Then I kept reading. I suspect that the key to forming a successful young adult character who is able to capture the attention of most readers, independent of age, is to display growth. In 352 pages, Riggs not only achieves this, but does it believably. Each new scene or experience has an impact on Jacob, sometimes stunting him, and other times forcing him into adulthood. Coming of age, you say? I think it’s a little more than that.

However, for the sake of brevity I’ll move on to the speck of things that I didn’t quite enjoy:

  • The parents. I’m not sure if Jacob’s suffocating and concerned, but not-quite-there parents are unfairly pulling at the corner of a distant memory of mine, but I wanted more or less of them.
  • I understand the flood of details that needed to be poured into the reader’s head, and I enjoyed the majority of them. At times, though, I felt that a couple of key conversations existed more for the reader rather than Jacob, our vessel into the unknown.
  •  I expected an open ended close to the story. I wanted to hungrily scour the internet for the next installment’s release date and mark my calendar but, while I know the series is only beginning, I somehow feel content with the ending. C’mon Riggs, be a tease once in awhile!

Despite these small irks, I recommend Ransom Riggs’ first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, to everyone over a certain age. But I urge those who enjoy an escape, goosebumps, photographs, kind-a-sorta historical fiction, and mystery to go get a copy immediately. Like, now. Also, quit your job, catch a cold, book a flight, and get stuck over-night in Denver—it makes the read that much more thrilling!

Thanks for the scares and near heart-attacks, Riggs. 3.5 stars.

P.S. Coincidentally, Hollow City, the second installment of this series was released today, 14 Jan 2014. Now isn’t that creepy. I guess I better go buy it….

My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife by Bina Cady Kiyonaga

I’ve read some rather lukewarm reviews of this autobiography and I don’t understand them.

 My Spy

I like tall people. I like Action. I like spy stories. I like travel. I like hard lives lived easy. I like real women who get things done; who occasionally cry. I like interracial couples. I like family and reality.

Therefore, I like My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife, the true story of Bina Cady Kiyonaga who has known, lived, and felt all those things I’ve listed above.

My Spy was a solid Amazon wish list maybe that accidentally wound up in my shopping cart. Two days later, an inattentive essential oil purchase plopped a surprise, book-shaped package on my front porch. And what a great surprise it was.

For the next three days it was My Spy and I making our own private “Read More” campaign montage. Reading in bed, Reading in the bathtub, Reading beneath a tree. Reading is Fun!

Lately I have been trying to pinpoint a character that I have absolutely adored in the novels that I’ve read. And not just adored because they are pure-hearted, but because they are perfect even in their flaws.

The only character to come to mind at first was Katniss Everdeen and that’s only because she reminds me of myself.  My family has taken to calling me Kait-niss, if you want proof. So, shout out to me! (And you, Ange.)

All Hunger Games aside, I’ve never liked someone on the page as much as I have Bina Cady Kiyonaga. You know why? Because this woman is honest, and at points, painfully so. Since reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (well, as much as I could stand) I have learned not to trust a person’s own biased account of their life, but I trust Bina. She expresses thoughts, experiences, and some insecurities that even your best friend might hesitate to share. I realized this when she explained the complications that befell upon her and her husband, Joe, after the first few days of marriage and a quite unspectacular wedding night. Ehem.

Most of all, I love this autobiography because I like Bad-asses.

Who marries a fine, tall Japanese-American soldier who later becomes a CIA agent? Oh, well, this fabulous Baltimore-born, Irish-American Catholic girl who doesn’t give an eff about 1947-era racism.

Who lived all over the globe, raising five children, and always whole-heartedly working on her marriage? Bina. Bina Cady Kionaga. Keep up, y’all.

I give this novel five stars because of the—what seems like—legitimate honesty within. This woman was not perfect, her family was not perfect, money wasn’t always plentiful, and every thought expressed in the book was not always positive. Yet, somehow, I still aspire to be a woman as strong and alive as Bina.

As a writer, I admit that My Spy wasn’t a vivid work of literary genius, and I’m glad. The book was written conversationally, candidly—and that made the story of the Kiyonaga family that much more enthralling.

Final confession. After days of reading this book non-stop, I put it down a few pages shy of the end…for two years. It didn’t slip my mind. My Spy sat on my dresser, daring me to suck it up and finish. But Joe had become ill and Bina’s language hinted that the outcome would not be pleasant. Death is inevitable for us all, yes, but I couldn’t bear to read her pain. That is what makes this book spectacular: me fearfully staring down the pink cover of My Spy for 730 days.

Thank you for sharing your story, Bina Cady Kiyonaga. Five stars.

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

*I will try not to include any spoilers in any of my reviews, now until the end of time. Amen. 

In the About Me section you heard me describe my “struggle” with books. I admitted that I am picky and maybe even a bit strange. Well, I lied. I didn’t lie. I under-exaggerated. Stay with me here, I promise that we’ll get to the truth eventually.

I am not a freak, but my tastes in books are freakish.

The supernatural is really big nowadays after that young adult, anti-feminist little series that shall not be named, blew up. I am very wary of the supernatural and have gotten into many arguments with a handful of creative writers who have critiqued my own work. They call my stories supernatural and I get offensive. Then we dance along this supernatural, fantasy, dystopian line until we get tired, have a beer, and rest our feet.

In the end, I like oddities. I like strange occurrences that could actually happen. I like time travel and absurdly corrupt governments (on paper). And I love the quiet stories with main characters who fill the concrete world with lofty ideas and intentional hallucinations.

Mr. Fox

Hey, talking about intentional hallucinations and how much I like them, let’s talk about Mr. Fox since that’s what we’re really here for. Mr. Fox, which is written by Helen Oyeyemi was on the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books list in 2011 and I’m sort of surprised that I hadn’t happened across it until late 2012. The book is about Mr. Fox, a writer with a wife, Daphne, and a Muse Mary Foxe.

Mr. Fox has pressure coming from all directions with a difficult marriage, a cheeky muse, and the inability to stop killing off all of his female characters. All these pressures eventually intersect, creating a disturbing yet refreshing story.

What I really want to talk about is Oyeyemi’s writing. It’s one of those books that you read slowly for a few reasons. One, there are jumps between reality, make-believe conversations between Mr. Fox and Mary, and the fantastic short-short stories tucked in between where Fox is working through the whole killing heroines issue. Two, well, the writing is marvelous. How Oyeyemi avoided confusing me once was a miracle. How she maintained countless voices in such a small space is awing. Her dialogue is quick and witty and supports her unnatural ability to allow a scene to be sexy, disconcerting, tense, and sweet all at once.

There are many poems, short stories, and novels out there that are just weird for the sake of being weird. They throw out curse words and make characters lick things just for the shock value. Perhaps what is most impressive about Mr. Fox is that Oyeyemi very clearly began this novel with a story in mind and the weirdness just followed naturally.

I know I trash-talked it before but this story does get somewhat supernatural, especially where things like death are concerned. Again, I appreciate this for two reasons. Firstly, the supernatural aspects come within Mr. Fox’s writing. Meaning the story is still grounded; we have not left reality. Second, who am I to say that people don’t waltz in their tombs after death? I can assure you that I have never spent the night in a mausoleum…yet.

Finally, to reveal why this book caught my attention: I have a muse. A completely made-up, call-me-crazy muse. While I don’t fondle my muse or have loud and mentally scarring conversations with it, yes, I have a muse. We run through dialogue in my head. We make words sound genuine and interesting (I think). We explore different stories and, okay, I sometimes wish my muse were real.

Don’t look at me like that.

Anyway, I give Mr. Fox four stars for originality and excellent writing. The cover art is rather impressive too. If you’ve read the book, I hope you found my review unbearably accurate. If you haven’t read the book, what are you doing just sitting there? Go. Buy it. And support a small, local bookstore if you can.

Up Next: This Is Not Chick Lit by Various Authors

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” makes me want to start a book club. Not some new, trendy (I hate to say—hipsteresque) book club where we drink PBR out of eternally dingy thrift store goblets, and talk about vinyls more than books.

I’m talking a real book club.

I want a gaggle of forty-somethings with wrinkled mommy-pooches, where you’re side-eyed if you don’t have more than two children, a disinterested husband, and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. I want to sit back on Lydia or Martha or Betsy’s plastic covered sofa, eating a processed mash of lukewarm casserole off of a recycled forest-green plastic spoon, and delight in the thrilling strictly book-centered conversation. I want this because I believe in New York Time’s Best Selling Author Gillian Flynn’s recent novel. Because while reading I clutched my heart and walked around my house cursing characters under my breath. I squealed, and growled even more. I thought: I trusted you! How could you? And, to be honest, I genuinely had my feelings hurt more than once.

I know that forty-something year old women (for the most part) have seen it all. I respect them. The screaming kids, long days at work, that damn toilet seat that is never down, and whatever other dumb things husbands do after twenty or so years of marriage. These everyday grievances—very reasonably—would make it more difficult to be shocked or wowed or amazed on a daily basis. I would love to see that amusement. Maybe amusement is a poor word choice when we’re discussing a book so rich in murder, deceit, and scandal. But I want to see whose side they take—or are tempted to take—in this dark novel.

Basically, a group of 21-year-old hipsters reading some book and gasping at everything wouldn’t match or amplify the laborious tug that “Gone Girl” inflicted upon my heart.

(I am a 21-year-old anti-hipster in a way so passionate that I am often called a hipster.)

Gone Girl

The review, the review. Back to the review.

Gone Girl.

Flynn does everything right, as can been seen through her fame and (I assume) fortune. A few things she does exceptionally:

  1. Her characters: Well-rounded, realistic, human.
  2. Her Formula: Not all books have one so unique.
  3. Her plot: It’s a puzzle, cemented together in the end.

To put it all into actual thought: Flynn’s characters are varied, plentiful, realistic. They evolve. I marveled at her ability to create such depth in each character—depth that goes beyond the handful of focal characters, but reaches out to form very real and important people through phone conversations and second-hand reports of “off-screen” encounters.

The formula here says a lot. It does a lot. The diary entries are a device, another way in which we experience a character. The relationship quizzes splattered within these entries solidify this character. And, perhaps, that is what Flynn does so well. We have two narrators, but more than two voices coming through. With this, I must say, that I was always entertained, switching from one to the other like a stupid-hungry-excited puppy. But how dare I say any more? I might ruin the novel.

Finally, the plot. A big ole’ mash of cause and effect: That happens because of this. So this happens because of that. Of course! It is a mystery. You knew this from the start. From the spindly white scratches across the ominous black cover to the eerie synopsis, you knew this was going to get juicy. But I didn’t know how it would seep, so wonderfully laden with secrets and lush, substantial facts. I love facts—they make everything so real. They make a sunny New Orleans afternoon feel like midnight during a hailstorm.

I can’t go outside. Are you crazy?

 

I ran into some frustrations, but none I could harp on. Like my opinions of the characters, my stance on these frustrations changed constantly. The feminist in me felt troubled at times by how the female was handled. Were feminists getting a bad rap here? Were we being misrepresented? Or, were women just out of luck in Flynn’s novel? I don’t know, I couldn’t decide. It may have been the discomfort of seeing various, misfortunate women losing that disturbed me. After all, no one really won here. I could speculate out loud, give passages and ruin “Gone Girl” for any innocent passerby, but I’m no hussy.

If you’re looking for an addictive, twisty, and slightly-gruesome read, this book is for you.

Ultimately I cannot give Flynn’s “Gone Girl” less than four stars.