The Grownup

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What to expect

A young woman is making a living faking it as a cut-price psychic (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). She makes a decent wage mostly by telling people what they want to hear. But then she meets Susan Burke.

Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year-old stepson Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor. Susan has become convinced that some malevolent spirit is inhabiting their home. The young woman doesn't believe in exorcism or the supernatural. However when she enters the house for the first time, she begins to feel it too, as if the very house is watching her, waiting, biding its time . . .

The Grownup, which originally appeared as 'What Do You Do?' in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.

Critics Review

  • Whilst the bestselling Gone Girl is still the title being devoured at every book club, author Gillian Flynn has moved on with her latest offering The Grownup. It’s a short story about a woman who earns a living pretending to be a psychic.

    HELLO FASHION MONTHLY
  • Gillian Flynn’s The Grownup is a psychologically taut novella told from the viewpoint of a con artist, who attempted trick is thwarted by a malevolent teenage boy.

    VOGUE
  • a fierce, sharply written tale

    METRO
  • Stories should be taut but humming with ambiguity, and The Grownup is both.

    THE SPECTATOR
  • a chilling short story about a fake clairvoyant who gets tangled up with a mysterious family.

    GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
  • This chilling short story from the author of Gone Girl is not for the faint-hearted.

    WOMAN AND HOME

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