Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.
The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.
As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.
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2 comments:
Iliked this book as well as her earlier book: Sharp Objects.
This novel is shocking, brutal and disconcerting, an unsparing exploration of people and their motives, a harsh landscape that questions long-held assumptions about the human capacity for violence. The Days are the object of ridicule, their hand-me-down clothes and indelible mark of less-than. It is easy to recoil, to point the finger of guilt at the angst-riddled teenager, Ben, and donate money for the profoundly disturbed survivor, who bounces from place to place wreaking havoc on those who provide shelter. And as the facts of that night are revealed, layer after layer of ugliness is exposed, a confluence of violence that fills the air with screams, then silence. From the Day family to Ben's questionable associates and his flirtation with the forbidden, from bone-crushing poverty and the banality of true evil, Flynn crafts a masterpiece of cold-blooded horror with no happy ending, daring the reader to look away. Stripping the mask of innocence from the predictable response to a heinous crime, Flynn stares into the void, daring us to do the same. Luan Gaines.
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