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Sharp Objects: A Novel | 
| Author: Gillian Flynn
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  126 reviews
Sales Rank: 12179
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0307341550
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780307341556
ASIN: 0307341550
Publication Date: July 31, 2007
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Amazon.com Review
As loyal Entertainment Weekly subscribers, we have been fans of Gillian Flynn for her smart, funny, and spot-on reviews of books, movies, and TV, but we were not prepared for her stunning debut novel Sharp Objects, a wickedly dark thriller that Stephen King calls a "relentlessly creepy family saga" and an "admirably nasty piece of work." We're calling it a cross between Twin Peaks and Secretary--sinister, sexy, and stylish. Perfect fall reading. --Daphne Durham
10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Gillian Flynn
 Q: Do you prefer writing novels or reviewing?
A: I think writing is more pure--and actually a bit easier for me. It's just me and my laptop, not me and my laptop and a TV show that 30 people have worked on. Reviewing keeps you sharp--I can hardly watch or read anything without taking notes now--but plain old writing I find actually relaxing.
Q: Do think your writing is influenced more by books that you have read, or shows/movies that you have seen?
A: My mom spent her career as a reading teacher and my dad is a retired film professor, so I was really steeped in both books and movies growing up. To this day, when I get my dad on the phone, pretty much his first sentence is "Seen anything good lately?" I love putting words together (I've never met a simile I didn't like), but when I write I often think in "scenes"--I want these two people, in a dirty bar, with this song playing in the background.
Q: I hear you are working on your second book...is it is too early to ask what it's about?
A: I'm still playing around with the whole plot--when I wrote Sharp Objects, I wasn't even sure who the killer was for a bit. But I can say [the new book] has to do with family loyalty, false memories, a wrenching murder trial, and a dash of good 'ole 1980s hair metal and devil worship.
Q: What is your writing process like? Have you changed anything about how you work since your first book?
A: My writing process is incredibly inefficient, and hasn't changed between books. I really don't outline: I know basically how I want the story to start, and vaguely how I want it to end (though like I said, with Sharp Objects even that changed!). Then I just write: Some characters I start finding more interesting, some less. I write entire swaths that I pretty much know I'll cut. I have an entire file of "deleted scenes." I guess the one thing that has physically changed is I moved into a new place since my first book--it has a great bathtub, and I'll prop my laptop up and write in the bath for hours. Which is, admittedly, weird.
Product Description
WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.
NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.
HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 121 more reviews...
 Wow -- what a debut! September 22, 2008
This is an extremely well-written and forceful book, especially for a first novel. There's nothing remotely tentative about this story of Chicago reporter Camille Preaker's return to her little southeast Missouri hometown to do a story on the murder of two local young girls less than a year apart. It may be the work of a serial killer and the local head cop is out of his depth, so they've called in a homicide specialist from Kansas City. But the murder investigation is only part of the story. More mesmerizing, and a good deal creepier, is Camille's re-examination of her own family, which brings new meaning to the description "dysfunctional." Camille's younger sister, Marian, died two decades ago at about the same age as the recently murdered girls, having been "cared for" by Adora, their vampiric mother. Then, a few years later, Adora had another daughter, Camille's half-sister, Amma, who, at thirteen, is extraordinarily pretty, precociously sexual, and who bosses the clique that runs the school with calculated cruelty. She's very much her mother's daughter. Stephen King, not noted for gushing endorsements of other people's work, comments on the jacket that the effect of the narration is cumulative, and that's exactly right. As you move farther and farther into this horror, you dread what you know is probably coming, but you're unable to look away, to stop reading. Flynn's style is both unadorned and exquisitely sharp. The former comes out in Camille's matter-of-fact description of her own pathology: She's a "cutter," having spent most of her life incising words into her body with knives and razors, cultivating the scars until she dare not wear anything but long sleeves and pants legs. The latter is demonstrated by the fact that this book just leaps with sly, quotable lines: "It was a natural gift for Adora, making other women feel incidental."
A visiting cop "peeled the label of the empty beer bottle next to him and smoothed it out onto the table. Messy. A sure sign he'd never worked in a bar."
In describing the way her mother manipulates everyone, Camille relates how the death of her little sister was so useful in that regard. No matter what anyone said, "my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby."
Or, "Reporters are like vampires. They can't come into your house without your invitation, but once they're there, you won't get them out till they've sucked you dry."
Or, "`So hard to get good help these days,' she muttered earnestly, unaware no one really says that who's not on TV."
Or, "Like all rural towns, Wind Gap has an obsession with machinery. Most homes own a car and a half for every occupant (the half being an antique collectible, or an old piece of crap on blocks, depending on the income bracket)."
One of my favorites, in describing an acquaintance's rather bland husband: "He was good-looking if you looked at him long enough."
Flynn also has the knack of setting an entire mood by describing a single detail. For example, the little town of Wind Gap snaps into focus when Camille notes that she found the police chief "banging the dent out of a stop sign at the corner of Second and Ely, a few blocks from the police station." Or, of a group of 13-year-old girls passing around a bottle of rum: "The rim of the bottle was ringed with pink lip gloss."
Damn, that's good stuff.
This is one of those books you'll keep thinking about for months. Flynn is definitely going on my list of new authors to watch.
 Leaves one with 'rotten feelings' August 20, 2008
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
The razor blade on the front cover of the book is what one yearns for right after embarking on this read, sharp blade with which to cut every single page, one by one, until they are so neatly shredded that even the memory of what was written on them becomes non existent. And then, one can use the same razor to end one's own life.
I'm still unsure what the author was thinking when she began this book, unless she had some very deep and very disturbing mental issues to work through.
This book is dangerous and not because it excites one with a thrilling and suspenseful story. It is dangerous because once one reads it, one looses any desire to look for another book that may restore one's faith in the existence of good books with an uplifting charge. Not only is this book dangerous, but it is sick. Its underlying sickness is that it's emotionally draining and unless readers are looking to load up on more mental baggage (I can't think of anyone who doesn't have enough), I'd stay away from its pain.
The main character is a female reporter who returns home on an assignment (covering the serial murders of two little girls). As memories of her painful childhood emerge, readers find a lot more about her character, for example her alcoholic addiction and her obsession to carve words into her own flesh. Waves of her unresolved issues wash away further hopes of a challenging literary work as readers are practically dragged into her problems (not loved enough by her mother, not popular enough in school, not motivated enough in her work) and are subjected to the anguish of either feeling sorry for her or wanting to end her existence.
As disturbing details of the two murders resurface, readers are introduced to yet two more characters as equally unpleasant as the first. There is the psychologically unstable (almost emotionally poisonous) personality of her mother and the pathologically sinister and equally disturbed one of the teenage sister. And of course there are the endlessly problematic and mentally crushing details of the small-town's Midwest America (why would one want to read this is beyond my understanding).
This book robs one of smiles, of the beauty of life, and even of the reason for love. It is not only bitter, but leaves one with an unpleasant smell of what I'd like to call rotten feelings. I can't brand the book dull (as it did leave me with unwanted thoughts), but I can promise you that you'll feel dull once you've read it. I don't recommend it, but may compare the feelings I have for it to what Chuck Palahniuk's 'Choke' birthed in me.
by Simon Cleveland
Impressive August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Solid book. Great twist. Maintains attention throughout. Disturbing at times. Wasn't expecting much going in but Flynn's debut novel was pretty impressive.
Small Town Nastiness August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a depraved little thriller, in a sick, small town underbelly kind of way. No big surprises, really, but it held my attention throughout and in the end I was interested to see what happened to the tormented characters, and that's always a good thing. Recommended.
Like watching a wreck you know will occur - you can't close your eyes! August 3, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
SUMMARY: Evil people create an evil town, and a creatively self-destructive reporter returns to the evil family and town (which led her to become who she is), as well as to investigate some particularly evil murders while she faces her own demons.
Oh, sometimes I wish Amazon had a rating system for different aspects of a book. But for this one, I have to create my own:
- Prose/writing style: 4
It's not the writing that makes this like watching a train wreck about to occur - it's the plot that zings along and you just know the worst is coming. Solid, engaging writing.
- Page-turning, Psychological Thriller/Plot and Pace: 4.5 stars
With psychological suspense which continues to build it's a "I can't put this down" type book. It's been one of the few recently where foregoing sleep to keep going with it was the most enjoyable option.
You'll know who did it half way in. That doesn't stop you being caught in the action - or by having a couple of occassional curve balls occassionally thrown at you. And despite knowing where it was going, I was definitely surprised by how some things played out.
- Characters: 3.o stars
Most of the characters are over-the-top in their assigned flawed role (but perhaps that's what makes it such a page-turner): evil mother, obtuse husband, mean high school bullies, depressed 40 year olds...
The main character, Camille, raises the character bar though. She is a horribly flawed, yet creatively self-destructive woman that truly hates herself - and consistently makes stupid choices to prove it. And still somehow - you root for her.
BOTTOM LINE: 4.0
No matter the rating - this book grips you and won't let you go- and that's hard to say about many paychological thrillers.
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