Making Helen Reddy Proud

I am confident that Helen Reddy would affirm that "reading books about bad parenting and horrible childhoods" was on her mental list of things confident women can do when she helped pen the words to "I am Woman". If ever I needed a background song to keep me focused on a book, reading "Dark Places" was it for me (also a contender, The Little Engine that Could's mantra of "I think I can, I think I can", which would also restrain my mind from creeping to tunes like Suzanne Vega's "Luka").

I bravely read Gillian Flynn's first novel, "Sharp Objects", earlier this summer and managed to keep my subconscious fears ("Could this happen to one of my kids?") at a dull roar while I lost myself in Flynn's writing. Brendan (who read it last summer) somewhat burst my bubble by telling me that her debut was nothing compared to "Dark Places", the story of the youngest daughter, Libby, of a family allegedly murdered by the eldest child, the only son, Ben. Told in chapters alternating between the present time (in which she is, 20+ years later, questioning the guilt of her brother) and the past, readers are overwhelmed with the horror of the murders and the sadness of Libby's ensuing childhood and life. Fortunately for me, the book begins in the present time, where the facts are directly presented: Libby's two older sisters and mother were gruesomely murdered (suffocation; blunt force trauma with an axe; knife to the heart) in their decrepit farmhouse late one night in January, 1985; Ben, the 15 year old son, was found guilty of the murders (conducted, they claim, as part of a Satanic ritual) and sentenced to life in prison. I can handle facts; it's the events that lead up to those facts that are unbearable for me to read. Flynn's choice to alternate between time periods (and narrators) allowed me to handle the brief glimpses of the unraveling, but also gave me a break from the present heartache that is Libby's life. How much bad stuff can one person take in a lifetime?

Other writers could certainly take the ideas in this plot and string them together to make a decent mystery. It's the emotional angst that Flynn captures so well that puts this book over and above the top of her peers. After reading 344 pages of turmoil, it was this sentence in the final chapter that got me: " There is such a thing as a pretty trailer park, you know." Life will never come easily for Libby, or any of the characters from this impoverished community, but particularly for damaged Libby. Despite that, the journey she takes in this book ends with her having more support and more options for a better future.