The Grown-Up, a short story
by Gillian Flynn (originally titled “What Do You Do”), is a deliciously devious
haunted house story that is able to pack more than a few nifty twists within
its airtight 62 pages. And with such a short page count, it is important for
the story to be lean and filling, and this very much is. I am not familiar with
Flynn as a writer, who is obviously most well known for her novel Gone Girl. If
this short book is any indication as to what she brings to the table, I can’t help
but feel that I am missing out on something. It has the feel of a classic ghost
story, with books like The Haunting of Hill House and The Lady in White being
name dropped purposely in the story, but where it leads to is very modern and
very intriguing. It begins with one of the best first lines you are likely to
come across, where an unnamed female narrator describes why she is going to
quit giving massages with happy endings. We get a little backstory from her,
about her life with her grafter mom and how she got to where she is now, but it
doesn’t take long for the real story to kick in when Susan comes to the massage
parlor/psychic desperate for help with her overbearing stepson. The narrator
slowly inserts herself into Susan’s life even when Miles, the stepson, shows
obvious signs of sociopathic behavior, which include cutting the tail off a
cat. But everything is not as it really is, and over the course of a few pages,
the book achieves the kind of nirvana you can only get with a well-constructed
story. It ends a tab abruptly and feels rushed (an odd complaint for a book of
such short length) but it leaves you with questions, the kind that stay with
you when you are done, which always the sign of a story done right.
Rating: 4/5
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