Dark Places

I want to do a post on Chicago, and on my new kitten family, but I just finished Gillian Flynn's Dark Places (and am currently in the middle of Sharp Objects) and she is so dark and her prose is so beautiful and I am in love with this author. Her thesis on women having ugly souls and that they are capable of evil things was one we talked about in my publishing class, and totally worth the read. Basically, as a feminist she also wants to show that women can also be villains and that femininity does not absolve you of becoming the bad guy in the story. More than that, as a woman you can be the bad guy without an excuse related to how a man treated you in your past. Totally without man's influence, a woman is just as capable of evil as a man is.

The question she poses is- why is it so much more unsettling for a woman to do evil things without motivation, when it's nearly always expected that the bad guy in a scary movie will be a man (and often with no motivation other than he's the designated antagonist)? More than that, what is the "feminine" evil? The answer is Amy Dunn, but I'm still searching for her diabolical equal.

Dark Places doesn't tackle this nearly as much as Gone Girl does, but I think Sharp Objects will get back to that idea of feminine villains and I'm excited to see what she does with it.

Anyway, the trailer came out and while the book wasn't as good as Gone Girl, I think Dark Places cinematically will work better as a movie. Definitely a little more unsettling scary than a thriller mystery, and not something I would take my mom to see.