The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

Crown, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0804188975

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, and audio.

If anyone can write an unlikable woman character and make her seem sympathetic for even a moment, that person is Gillian Flynn. The Grownup is narrated by a con artist who gives hand jobs for a living, and is retiring due to carpal tunnel syndrome.  As a sex worker, she has a client who loves to read and, in a little metafictional foreshadowing to the events that follow, lends her Gothic supernatural tales to discuss during their time together. In her new career as a psychic, she hopes to expand her business into the homes of upper-class women who want their homes “cleansed”.

Enter Susan Burke. While at first Susan is skeptical, she is soon convinced that there is something wrong with her house, and, possibly, with her stepson. Susan is convinced that she has found blood on the walls, that her stepson is disturbed, and that it all comes down to bad vibrations in the house, a former Victorian manor that has been gutted, renovated, and modernized.  The narrator convinces Susan that she can get rid of those bad vibrations… for a price.

Soon, it appears that the narrator may have conned herself into believing the house is haunted. Or has she? Research turns up a gore-filled history on the house, and the stepson, an angry fifteen-year-old, is saying and doing bizarre and threatening things. For the first time concerned for someone else, she goes to Susan and urges her to leave the house immediately. When Susan runs from the room, and her stepson enters, reality really starts bending. The ending of this story is surprising and disturbing, both in what it says about the Burke family and the narrator. Even the last sentence doesn’t seem like an ending as much as the beginning of another twisted tale.

Fast-paced and compelling, The Grownup is a trainwreck from which the reader can’t turn away.  Those looking for a sharp, fast (it’s just 69 pages), unsettling, Gothic tale will find that Gillian Flynn has hit the mark. Recommended.

Note: The Grownup originally appeared as “What Do You Do?” in the anthology Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski