Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Grownup

The Grownup
Readnmachine avatar reviewed on + 1440 more book reviews


This brief, stand-alone short story by Gillian Flynn, may not reach the levels of classic horror, but it provides a twisty and entertaining diversion for a few hours.

Like Flynn's longer works, it depends largely on characters (narrators and otherwise) whose lie, subvert, and twise reality like taffy, until no one -- certainly including the narrator -- is quite sure where the truth -- and therefore the peril -- may lie.

There is one major "oops, I gotcha" moment that the observant reader will see, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the character who tells it is the only one twisting the truth here, or that Flynn thought the reader would actually buy into it until she chose to reveal that particular falsehood.