The Grownup

The Grownup

First stand-alone edition (US)
Author	Gillian Flynn
Original title	What Do You Do?
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Crown (US) Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK)
Publication date	2014 (in collection) 3 Nov 2015 (stand-alone)
Media type	Print
Pages	64

The Grownup is a short story by Gillian Flynn, initially published as What Do You Do? in the 2014 anthology Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.^[1] It was published as a stand-alone book that year by Crown in the US and by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK.

Universal is adapting the story, with the author and Michael De Luca to produce the film with Natalie Krinsky to write the screenplay.^[2]

Plot[]

A canny young woman grows up, successfully begging with her mother targeting church-goers, a keen observer of human behaviour. Later she became a soft-core sex worker behind an associated fortune telling establishment called 'Spiritual Palms'. She then began to suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and moved to becoming a fortune teller and a fake psychic and aura reader. Then she meets wealthy Susan Burke with a failing marriage and disturbed stepson 15-year-old Miles, and is hired to cleanse Susan's Victorian house called Carterhook Manor. The young woman doesn't believe in the supernatural but Susan is convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home. The narrator then senses that there may be something worrying about the house and the stepson. The tables are turned as there are twists at the end of the story...

Reception[]

Natasha Tripney writing in The Guardian has some reservations: 'Flynn plays around with the conventions of the ghost story, albeit in a rather heavy-handed way. Given how slim a thing this is, she squeezes in several wrong turns, but it all feels a bit mechanical. It’s her evocation of the main character’s grimy life that is, in the end, more intriguing than all the haunted house business.^[3]

Doug Johnstone also writes in The Independent: 'Flynn handles the throbbing suspense and horror build-up as expertly as ever. As you might expect, there are a couple of big twists and reveals, although this reviewer spotted them coming down the tracks. The problem here, I think, is down to simple length and depth of story. In this shortened, condensed format, it’s harder to embed the background and clues to a twist without the reader noticing, though that doesn’t stop them being a lot of macabre fun when they arrive.'^[4]

Katie Law praises the story on Evening Standard: 'The good news for Flynnies is that in its way this is another mini-Gone Girl: once again she employs unreliable narrators and re-introduces us to the idea that women can be nastier and more vengeful than men, especially when powered by corrosive sexual jealousy. The con girl may be unpleasant, but she’s the least of it. The bad news is that at just under 80 pages, it’s gone girl too quickly.'^[5]

References[]