SHARP OBJECTS
Two young girls are abducted and murdered in small-town Missouri, and journalist Camille Preaker is dispatched to cover the story. There's just one catch: it's her hometown. Flynn wastes no time pulling the reader into uncomfortable territory. Camille returns to the family mansion she fled years ago, moving back under the same roof as a cold, distant mother and a precocious thirteen-year-old half-sister whose hold over the local community feels quietly sinister. It's an unsettling household to be trapped in, even briefly. Camille carries her own wounds into this investigation, both figurative and literal, and as she digs into the murders, she finds herself uncomfortably drawn to the victims' stories. Too drawn, perhaps. Each promising lead collapses into a wall, nudging her to look inward rather than outward, picking apart the buried traumas of her own upbringing to make sense of what's happening around her. Flynn has a sharp instinct for psychological tension, and this novel builds it quietly, almost gently, before revealing how dark the foundations really are. For readers who loved Gone Girl, this earlier work shows the same controlled menace in a rawer, more personal form. Camille is a brilliantly flawed protagonist, and her reckoning with the past gives this crime story a weight that lingers well after the final page.
- Author: Gillian Flynn
- Publisher: W&N
- Genre: Thrillers & Suspense
- ISBN: 978-0753822210
- Pages: 336 pages