Customer Reviews

Sharp Objects: A Novel

5 star:		(95)
4 star:		(68)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Summary, no spoilers.

This is the story of Camille Preaker, who works as a reporter for a newspaper in Chicago. She has been assigned to cover the story of a possible child serial killer in a small town in Missouri. She was given this story mainly because this small town happens to be her hometown.

We know that Camille is a physically beautiful, but very troubled young woman. We know that she does not want to go home, and throughout the course of this disturbing novel we find out why.

I found this to be a very interesting story, and a page-turner which is high compliment. This book does an excellent job of showing the repercussions of child abuse, and what life is like in a small town.

The only reason this book did not get 5 stars is the mystery aspect. I cannot say more without a spoiler, but I found that part of the resolution improbable for a variety of reasons.

Still, this is a suspenseful, *different* book, and I think that the character of Camille Preaker will stay with me for a long time. I would definitely give Gillian Flynn another try.

When men fight, according to first novelist Gillian Flynn, they tend to bludgeon one another in blunt contests of strength, like good-natured warriors facing off in an athletic contest. Women fight in a much nastier fashion, she asserts, clawing, biting and using whatever other sharp objects are available to achieve domination over their female rivals. If you're willing to buy into Flynn's scathing portrayal of the so-called gentler sex, you'll surely be sucked into this dark mystery/thriller.

Camille Preaker, a reporter for an obscure Chicago newspaper, is assigned to investigate the recent murders of two young girls in her claustrophobic Missouri hometown. Besides overcoming the natural wariness the townsfolk exhibit toward a nosy journalist, Camille must face down her dysfunctional family - a controlling mother, distant step-father and a disturbed, thirteen-year-old step-sister whose catty group of friends makes the "Mean Girls" crowd look like a troup of Brownies. The closer Camille gets to cracking this grisly mystery, the harder she struggles to keep her horde of inner demons at bay and the more she begins to fear for her own safety.

If judged purely by the intensity of its suspense and page-turning quotient, "Sharp Objects" would easily merit five stars. Flynn taps into the psychological horror generated by a twisted family in a way that electrifies the narrative, reminding me of Dean Koontz in that regard. I had trouble, though, accepting the unlikely logistics behind the crimes and found certain characters to be so over-the-top as to strain credibility. These quibbles aside, Gillian Flynn already has mastered a fast-paced and hard-boiled writing style that's perfectly suited for the suspense genre, and she has created a fascinating heroine who could form the centerpiece for a winning series.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker"

One gripe I have about most thrillers is that the plot is all-important, and the characters end up so dull -- interchangeable, really. Not so with Camille in Sharp Objects! She's an incredibly-flawed and fragile character who I'm sure will haunt me for a long time, and whom I'll be reminded of sometimes when I see a certain type of person on the street.

I found this book to be an emotional experience because the deeper I got into Camille's world and the more I learned her personal story, the more I realized that her discovery of who the murderer was would have the potential to absolutely destroy her -- and she's someone who, by all rights, really should have hit bottom by now.

A short, terse book you won't soon forget.

Exciting, promising, can't-put-it-down debut novels are hard to find - with Gillian Flynn's "Sharp Objects," it seems we've found one more to add to that all too brief list. It's a stunning story, tightly crafted, and appropriately chilling.

Now a reporter for a class C Chicago newspaper, Camille Preaker is a survivor. Her recent past includes a stay in a psychiatric hospital where she was treated for various disorders, including self-mutilation. At the age of 13 she carved "queasy" around her stomach and at 29 "vanish" on her neck. Troubled? In spades.

However, it looks like she may get a break as she's assigned to cover what is probably a serial killer story. On the downside is the fact that the scene of the crime is her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, a place she left some eight years ago. She doesn't want to return but the thought of a career making yarn is too tempting and off she goes, back to an old house that holds unhappy memories and a mother who gives new meaning to neurotic.

Two young girls have been murdered, and the local police seem to think a transient is responsible. A handsome profiler from Kansas City doesn't think the answer is as easy as that. Throughout the investigation Camille is forced to relive childhood trauma and confront ghosts that have haunted her through the years.

Those who enjoy psychological thrillers will have found a winner in "Sharp Objects," especially as read by actress Ann Marie Lee. Well remembered for her stage and television performances, she inhabits Camille's persona with nuance and modulation. As the climax approaches we find ourselves listening even more intently as Lee's voice builds, leading the way.

- Gail Cooke

Sharp Objects is a breathtaking, suspenseful, beautifully crafted novel. Not exactly a mystery, not exactly a thriller, not exactly horror, the novel has bits of all of them, and fine writing rarely associated with popular fiction.

It's hard to say too much about the novel without giving anything away, but one thing that especially impressed me is the twist Flynn puts on the classic "don't open that door!" moment in books and movies. You know - when we know something bad will happen if the door is opened, but the dumb character does it anyway. Well, here the protagonist is not dumb; she knows along with us what is being revealed and share our sense of impending doom - but cannot help but open the door even so. Brilliant!

This book touches on every "disease of the week" known to man. It deals with cutting, alcoholism, teen drugs and sex, Munchausen by Proxy, animal cruelty, mean girls, etc. The author doesn't thoroughly draw any conclusions for any of these topics and while I was reading I kept waiting, almost smugly, for the next "crisis". That said, the story was really pretty good and it left me a bit unsettled. One passage about the pigs was particularly disturbing. I'll never eat a ham sanwich again without thinking about this book. Although the characters were interesting they were highly unbelievable and unlikeable. I was none too sympathetic toward any of them. I would recommend this book to open-minded adults (definitely not for anyone under 16) who like gothic-type mysteries and aren't easily offended by graphic sex and bizarre situations involving children.

This book is TOO MUCH. Too much sex, too much alcohol, too much drug use, too much self-mutilation, too many people intent on the destruction of themselves and others. The narrator and her family could be poster children for the 21st century version of any Grimms fairy tale (only without the happy ending).

The narrator, Camille Preaker, a reporter (with more than a few problems of her own) returns to her home town to investigate the murder of two young girls. The town of Wind Gap harbors more than it's share of bizarre characters and would be an excellent place to set up practice if you happen to be a psychiatrist in search of a new client base.

We have a self-centered, irrational mother; an out of control half-sister, high school friends all displaying symptoms of neurotic behaviour, murder victims who are less than sympathetic, and a group of insidious teen-aged girls who could have stepped out of a work by John Saul or perhaps Edgar Alan Poe.

Gillian Flynn writes of her unhinged creations; malovolent females, victims and victimizers, poisoness environments, with such clarity and knowledge, it makes one wonder about the childhood of this writer.

All in all, not a very pretty tale.....but one that does stay with you like a bad dream. Two and a half stars.

This was one of those books that, once you start reading, you simply cannot put it down. I read it in one day and had nightmares about it that night. I've never had nightmares about any book I've ever read!

I read several chapters before I even realized that the author was a woman and that this was a first time novel. The plot was tight and I was totally fooled about who the killer was, although I had my suspicions. If you love fast-paced, well-written thrillers, then this is the book for you. I'm eagerly anticipating her next one!!

Lots of hype for a first novel usually means an average story with a huge publicity budget. Boy was this an exception. Simply terrific, and I mean that in the eerie's possible way. One of the darkest, blackest, depressing, gut-wrentching "thrillers" I've ever read. I simply could not put this incredibly addictive novel down. Bravo Ms. Flynn. I can hardly wait for your next novel. There's nothing joyous, uplifting or even borderline happy here, but if you can handle that grab this book quick, you will not be disappointed.

As a self-described Thriller junkie, I was looking forward to a book by a new author, gifted to me for Christmas. Unlike other reviewers, I wasn't roped in immediately. It took a few chapters for me to get a handle on the main character, Camille, and the direction the story was headed. Once I did, the rest of the story seemed to have every thriller-cum-hard boiled mystery stereotype: the throwaway sex references that didn't help the storyline at all, the obligatory roll-in-the-hay (such as it was) between the protagonist and the police officer, and the twisted-up history that is rooted in the hometown. Oh, and one can't forget the eventual shock ending, that I figured out less than halfway through the book. That said, I actually enjoyed much of the book, and the characters themselves, though steeped in seriously messed-up lives (and the aforementioned stereotypes), were likeable enough. The version of "cutting" described here was intriguing, and it was interesting to see how it played in Camille's experiences and choices as each event occurred. Reading this book wasn't a bad way to spend an afternoon, but it won't be one I'd read again.