Disturbing story. Disturbing characters. This book will make you feel uncomfortable, that's what Gillian Flynn does best!

I'm not sure I loved it but it's definitely the best written thriller I've read so far this year... still only getting 3.5 stars though!

I did suspect the right people but the twists were still... well disturbing!

3.5 stars

This book was not easy to read at all, I listened to the audiobook and there were times I had to shut it off because it got to be a little too much for me. Reading about characters cutting makes me extremely uncomfortable and kind of nauseous so I know you’re probably wondering why I even read this... and I read it because I love Gillian Flynn’s writing and this one has been on my TBR for years.

I actually saw the tv show before I read this so I knew about all the major twists, but I still love the way they are written. This book is a lot darker than I could have even imagined it, something about Gillians way with words in this, it’s really horrifying to read about certain things in this.

Even though I wasn’t a super huge fan of the story itself, you can’t deny that the writing in this story is just damn good. And it made me feel so uncomfortable and icky and nauseous at times which is just further proof of a really great writer.

Español - English

La protagonista tiene fallas como todos la tenemos, pero tiene una forma de narrar que te intriga a seguir leyendo.

Cuando era solo una niña murió su hermana y desde entonces escribía palabras con cortes en su piel. Motivo por el cual estuvo ingresada en un hospital psiquiátrico.

Trabaja como reportera y se ve obligada a ir a su pueblo de infancia a cubrir un reportaje de una niña asesinada y otra desaparecida.

Es realmente perturbadora la relación que Camille tiene con su madre, un personaje con demasiadas capas, extraña y perturbada, como la mayoría de los personajes de esta historia.

Es una historia oscura y el final es totalmente inesperado y retorcido.

Es mi primer libro de drama psicológico y definitivamente no será el último.

✨✨✨

The main character has flaws as we all have, but has a way of narrating that intrigues you to continue reading.

When she was only a little girl her sister died and since then she wrote words with cuts on her skin. That is why she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

She works as a reporter and is forced to go to her hometown to cover a murdered girl and another missing.

It is really disturbing the relationship that Camille has with her mother, a character with too many layers, strange and disturbed, like most of the characters in this story.

It's a dark story and the ending is totally unexpected and twisted.

It's my first book of psychological drama and it definitely will not be the last.

n  “The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”n

There is something deeply unhealthy about this book. It's in the characters, in the story, in the relationships, in the sex, and just in the general mood of the novel. Reading this made me feel a little unwell, both physically and mentally, but I am glad I did. If you know me, you'll know I love complex characters with issues that feel raw and real, rather than melodramatic. The people in this novel are majorly fucked up, no one is without a dark past and everyone, it seems, has a horror story.

The protagonist - Camille Preaker - was just thirteen when her sister died and fuelled by grief (amongst other things) Camille spent her teen years carving words into her flesh, covering almost every inch of her body with the marks of her pain. Ten years later, Camille Preaker is now a journalist who returns to the small town of her youth to report on the murders of two young girls - girls who had had all of their teeth removed.

Camille is soon caught up in the town once again, she tries to get along with the mother who never loved her and establish a relationship with the troublesome half sister she hardly knows. It seems that once again small towns hold the biggest secrets and Camille finds herself getting dragged deeper and deeper into the investigation, her fragile state of mind constantly threatening to tip her over the edge.

This is one mean and nasty book. I knew I was getting a dark, psychological thriller, but I expected something on par with In The Woods by Tana French. Um, not exactly. Flynn never shies away from the horrific details. You're not going to find anything pleasant in this story; sex, for example, is always something complex - it's an escape or a bargain or a catharsis. Everything else is similar.

Flynn does a fantastic job of challenging the notion that women are weak, innocent, damsels in distress. In a world where women are victims - both in their media representation and in statistics - this is a very interesting look at other kinds of women. It's programmed into us to believe that women are safer, kinder, built with an instinct that makes it difficult for them to be cruel and cause pain without reason. Maybe we were always wrong.

Last updated: April 2016

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Τα αιχμηρά αντικείμενα σκίζουν συναισθήματα,σχέσεις,σκεψεις,δεσμούς ιερούς και μη αφήνοντας ανεξίτηλα σημάδια και εμπειρίες ζωής!

Όσο και να εξωραΐζεται το κακό παραμένει ¨παντα¨μεσα στις ψυχές και την κατάλληλη στιγμή στις κατάλληλες συνθήκες δείχνει το πραγματικό του πρόσωπο!
Το ψέμα η εικονική ανθρωπιά και αλληλεγγύη,η τοξική χαμογελαστή παράνοια προσπαθούν διακαώς να μας πείσουν για επίπλαστες ανθρώπινες σχέσεις !

Τελικά οι άνθρωποι που δεν αγαπήθηκαν και διαταράχθηκαν ψυχικά απο αυτη την έλλειψη καταντούν τραγικά πρόσωπα ανελέητα και ανάλγητα αλλα και τόσο θλιβερά και αξιολυπητα ώστε νιώθεις να τα συμπονάς.

Εξαιρετικό βιβλιο συναρπαστική πένα που γράφει "αγια" και "αμαρτωλά ", "παρανοϊκά"και "σοφά" "εξωφρενικά ιδιόμορφα " και "εκπληκτικά συνηθισμένα".

LOVED this book - I liked it better than Dark Places. Really makes you think!

4.5 Stars

I mostly decided to read this because while I was searching for a good movie/tv show I came upon Sharp Objects and after reading some reviews I found out the book and author behind the story and the rest is history. I’m gonna watch the show tonight and I have a feeling it’s gonna be good (it has got Amy Adams playing Camille).

Anyway.. back to the book. This was not my usual cup of tea. I watch this kind of movie but I don’t read the books because words affect me differently than watching it play on a screen.

It felt raw, so raw. Moody, dark, real are just a few other attributes to attach to this story.

I’m not gonna get into the plot, there’s plenty of other reviews that do a play by play and it’s important to read some before diving in. This book is not for the faint of heart. It’s not like it’s horror or anything like that, but it was pretty horrific in the sense that it excavated the sickness of human nature. It was unhealthy, and it left me feeling weird, disoriented and now I need a happy, hopeful type of book to wash this one off.

I would recommend it. For all it’s nasty and dark content, it was so well written. The story, the characters.. it was just good. Really good!

I don’t feel particularly inspired to write any more details on this, maybe I just need to sit on it for awhile, but I think I made my point, which is : Read this!

The next two paragraphs give my review of this book, but if the only reason you’d be tempted to read on is to hear about the time I “met” Gillian Flynn, you can scroll past them.

Like so many other Goodreaders seduced by the buzz, I read and enjoyed every sharp bend of Gone Girl. It proved to be something of an archetype, too, with books like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window cashing in on similar threats and thrills. If you’re looking for even better correlation, though, go backwards in Flynn’s own oeuvre to this one. (Please allow me a quick aside to express an unreasonable but intense dislike for that word—oeuvre. When I try to sound it out in my head, that trailing “re” throws me, like Brett Favre’s name did to the people in Something About Mary. Plus, when I try to Frenchify that opening diphthong, my internal ear hates how affected it sounds. Sorry, I guess I needed to get that off my chest.)

Anyway, Sharp Objects has the same kind of feel to it as her famous bestseller. There are vivid descriptions, enough interior life written into the characters that you imagine you know them, and a screenwriter’s gift for how to set a scene. This one pulls a few surprises, too. (With some people, you come to expect the unexpected, right?) It also gives you a proper fear of Wind Gap, Missouri, where investigative journalist Camille Preaker grew up. She was working in Chicago but then returned to Wind Gap to uncover whatever she could about two girls, one murdered and the other missing. She and a police detective / love interest gathered details about the crimes which were pretty intriguing by themselves. But it was the human interest angles that gave it real life. We get a surfeit of dysfunction with this one: boozing, self-mutilation, and a rather exotic psychological syndrome.

As it turns out, I had a brief encounter with Ms. Flynn’s dark side in real life about two years ago. I came away thinking her characters come by their edginess honestly. It happened when we were living in Chicago. I’d taken to looking up semi-famous residents on the internet and then jogging by their addresses, mostly just to see what their places were like, but also on the off-chance of spotting them in person. I knew where the Blackhawks’ Jonathan Toews lived, John Cusack’s building was an easy trot away, and I could locate plenty of others from business, politics, sports and the arts. Anyway, it was a cool evening in Flynn’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. I’d been by her place before—very nicely kept, tucked away behind lots of trees and a fence. In the leafless part of the year you could get a view of the house itself. That night I saw a light on and heard music, so even though I knew I probably shouldn’t, I decided to stop for a closer look. I had my hands on the iron rails of her fence, peeking in, when all of the sudden from out of nowhere something grabbed hard at my loose sleeve. It was a large, no-nonsense dog that looked to be somewhere on the Doberman - Rottweiler spectrum. Of course I pulled back right away, but he’d gotten his teeth stuck in the cloth and wasn’t about to let go. I kept yanking to no avail. My heart rate, already elevated from the run, must have doubled again. The dog, meanwhile, was growling loudly enough that Flynn came out to investigate. I wished she would have called the brute off right away, but instead she said with imposing authority, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” I said. (Quick thinker, me.)

“Well, this is private property.”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just out for a run,” I said.

“Seems like you’re stalking me. Do you know who I am?” I wasn’t sure if it was daggers or machetes she was staring at me. Something sharp in any case. Also she was wearing a low-cut sweater showcasing a necklace with a razor blade pendant.

“Yeah,” I said, “you’re Gillian Flynn, right? The writer?” Only I messed up her name and pronounced it with a J sound.

“You don’t know me well, obviously. It’s Gillian,” she said, hitting the “guh” sound hard, as in Gone Girl.

“Oh, right, I should have known.” Then I thought there was a remote chance I could turn this around. “But hey, I really liked your book.”

By this time Satan’s Little Helper or whatever the dog's name was had relaxed his clench so I could take back my sleeve.

“OK, so you are some kind of celebrity stalker,” she said. “Pathetic. And a fool to boot. You need to get the fuck outta my yard.”

With that she marched back inside. Then her dog looked over as if to say, “Take it from me, buddy, you do NOT want to get on her bad side.”

I never did run by that house again. I’ll tell you what I did do, though, if you’re curious. I continued a tradition today that I started years ago with this April Fools’ Day prank post. I never did meet Gillian Flynn (though I really did run by her house once or twice). For all I know, she’s much nicer than that. At least I think she may be.  

n  n
This book is dark, really dark. The characters in it are all filled with hatred, violence, and pessimism. The content warnings in it are literally almost all the warnings in the current literary world. You will become incredibly sad while reading this book.

Despite all the above negatives, you are going to love this book. The narration is done at a perfect pace. The main characters' character arcs are done brilliantly. The author also discusses some rare medical conditions with meticulous precision, and the ending will satisfy most readers.

If you are someone over 18 and are in the right mood to read a dark psychological thriller, this book will be a great choice.

n  n

Shout out to this absolutely fabulous book in my n   latest booktube videon is up - all about the best books I read each month and 2019's bookish stats (and yes, I really did read 365 books in 365 days!).

Now that you know this one made the cut - check out the video to see what other ones made my top 12 list!

The written review:

n  n  
n  
n  Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. n

Camille Preaker is back in her hometown but for all the wrong reasons.

She just got out of a psych hospital and her next reporting assignment? To cover the murders of two preteens who lived in her town.

n  Problems always start long before you really, really see them.n

She has to live with her mother - who is a piece of work herself.

She's neurotic and hypochondriac, always fussing, poking and prodding. Camille's younger sister seems not to mind it but every time Camille is back in town, she can feel her hackles rise.

n  I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.n

The longer she spends in this town, the thinner her own grip on reality becomes.

n  It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.n

As the victims keep coming, Camille begins to realize that sometimes, some secrets are best kept locked away. Forever.

n  Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.n

Whewww.

This one was STUNNING.

This is the second Flynn book I've ever read and upon a reread, it's still my favorite.

Flynn is able to immerse you into her world like no other.

The setting was just the right level of hair-raisingly eerie and all of the characters were unsettling in their own, unique way.

This is one of those books that you pick up, and you just cannot put it down until you KNOW what the ending is.

Sharp Objects really got to me and I cannot wait to read what Flynn writes next!

Audiobook Comments
Read by Ann Marie Lee - and she was an absolutely stunning narrator. Her pace and tone just set the scene perfectly. Loved listening to this one!

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Camille Preaker is a young Chicago reporter with a troubled past. When a second young girl goes missing in her home town, Wind Gap, MO, Camille’s fatherly boss sends her down to get the inside scoop. Who says you can’t go home again? Well, maybe you can, but would you really want to? There is a reason she is in Chicago, instead of Podunk, MO, and the danger for Camille lies as much with her delicate psychological state, a product of her childhood, as it might with a psycho-killer on the loose. "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?"

Wind Gap is home to an array of characters left over from GCB, (Yes, I know it was published before the show) Stepford and Village of the Damned, and mix in a bit of Mommie Dearest and Cruella de Vil. Sounds like fun, no? Sorry to disappoint, but not so much.


Gillian Flynn - Image from Orion Books

Less than a year ago a young girl was found dead, floating in a stream, strangled, with her teeth removed. Now a second girl, about the same age, has gone missing and folks are fearing the worst. Well, duh-uh. ‘Ere long the body is found wedged in a foot-wide space between two buildings, sans pearly whites. The game is afoot.

Camille has to cope with an uncooperative local Sheriff and then try to get some, any information from the very cute Kansas City detective who had been brought in to help out. Camille is presented as a dish, and there is definite sexual tension between the reporter and the town’s visiting investigator. Ok I really first wrote “between the reporter and the town’s visiting dick”, but my wife (who does not have the mind of a 12 year old boy) shamed me into removing it. Usually she does not see my material until it is on line but had expressed curiosity about the book, so got a preview.


Amy Adams as Camille Preaker – image from NY Times

Camille makes the rounds, visiting the families of the victims, reconnecting, for good or ill, with her former schoolmates, most of whom seem never to have heard of the women’s movement. But the largest connection for Camille in Wind Gap is her childhood home, inhabited by her mother, stepfather, and half-sister. Cue thunder and lightning, creepy music, and under the chin lighting. Mom, ironically named Adora, has the warm presence of a guillotine and Camille’s stepfather, Alan, appearing in various costumes, seems to need only a pinky ring and fluffy white lap cat to complete the cartoon.

We all know what happens when we return to the houses in which we were raised. We regress. Come on, admit it. We behave like the children we once were. At the very least we feel the tug of those urges. In Camille’s case, her home life was, shall we say, lacking. Her little sister, Marian, had died when Camille was kid. Attempting to cope with that and some other issues, she took to a bit of long-lasting self-destructive behavior. In case the razor on the cover of this book is not obvious enough, Camille is a cutter, or was, anyway. Not just lines, but words. And the words on her skin pop into her mind as she digs into her research and takes on the psychological challenges of her home town. We learn early on that she had spent some time in rehab attempting to overcome her addiction. The Camille we meet here may be scarred, but is trying to carve a less destructive path forward for herself. It is a challenge, and represents a parallel set of mysteries. How did the adolescent Camille reach a place where she felt it necessary to indulge in such harmful behavior? What’s the deal with her family? Camille has to figure out not only the secret of the two murders, but her own history.


Eliza Scanlen as Amma Crellin

Her background makes it easier for her to relate to her thirteen-year-old stepsister, Amma, who knew both the dead girls. They share some traits. Like Camille as a kid, Amma (a word that usually means “mother”) is a mean-girl group leader, headstrong, bright, and not someone you would ever cross. Amma is physically precocious, and behaviorally far beyond that. She can usually be seen with her girl-pack, laughing at funerals, or, metaphorically, kicking cripples.

Adding to the creepshow atmosphere, and keeping the cutting notion sharp, there is a slaughterhouse in town. One particular scene resonated a lot. In the slaughterhouse, sows are positioned on their sides, with absolutely no room to maneuver, and piglets are brought to the captive females to nurse. It is not an inducement to eating bacon. It so happened that I had seen a film, Samsara, the day before reading the book, in which this very scene was shown. In the book, an added element is that a young girl sits and watches this with unnatural pleasure.

We learn more about the victims in time, and it is a somewhat fun ride. But every now and then Camille does or says something that makes you shake your jowls like Louis Black approaching a punch line and burble out a WTF? And those moments take one out of the story.


Patricia Clarkson as Adora Crellin

There is clear evidence of talent on display. I liked the prefiguring of the opening in which Preaker is looking at her latest story, about a crack-addled mother who abandoned her kids. Mothering figures prominently in the story. Using a slaughterhouse to echo the cutting Camille practices on herself, and maybe some other horrors as well, may have been a bit heavy-handed, but fine, ok. Having Camille carve words into her skin definitely seems over the top to me, a bit of literary license, but fine, ok. I enjoyed the fun noir twang with which Flynn begins her story, but it seemed to fade quite a lot over the course of 254 pages. Fine, ok. And for fun, Camille, who has been known to hoist a few, manages to visit what seems every bar in town. I took it to be a running joke, but I am not 100% certain. Fine, ok. I felt a lot of fine, ok here.

There is some sex, a fair bit of sexiness, some serious creepiness, a bit of satisfaction to be had in the procedural elements of finding this out, then that. But while there may have been satiric intent at work, the characters were either too inconsistent, too thinly drawn or even cartoonish to invest much emotionally. Sharp Objects may have been the bleeding edge of Flynn’s career as a novelist, and it is not a bad first cut, but it left me hoping that she would apply her obvious talent with finer lines next time, maybe use some subtler shades and etch more believable characters, give us material we could dig into a little deeper.


The images (except for the author’s) are from the HBO mini-series made from the book.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

March 23, 2013 - GR pal Peg clued us in to a wonderful piece Flynn wrote for Powell's, that goes a way to illuminating her literary choices. If you read this or other books by Flynn, this short piece is MUST READ material.
BTW, Powell's moved the location of this file. Thanks to sharp-eyed Marty Fried, it is linked again.

NY Times - Gillian Flynn Peers Into the Dark Side of Femininity - by Lauren Oyler - Nov. 8, 2018

با اینکه اینجا مخصوص کتاب هست و زیاد صحیح نیست در مورد فیلم یا سریال های اقتباس شده از روی کتابها نظر بدیم ولی خود به خود این مقایسه ی کتاب و اقتباس پیش میاد، خصوصا برای کسایی که هم اهل خوندن هستند و هم اهل دیدن
کتاب که تموم شد مستقیم رفتم سراغ سریال و اون رو هم دیدم و باید بگم هرکدوم برای خودش ویژگی هایی داره و اینکه کتاب رو بخونید یا فیلم رو ببینید یا هردو کار رو کنید بستگی به شخصیت و علایق خودتون داره. به صورت خیلی خلاصه بخوام بگم، اگه از عنصر غافل گیری خوشتون میاد حتما اول سریال رو ببینید و اگه خوندن افکار یه شخص و روند منطقی تر یه داستان رو ترجیح میدید، سراغ کتاب برید
کتاب به صورت اول شخص روایت میشه و شخصیت اصلی کتاب (کمیل) دچار مشکلات روانیه و توصیفاتش در مورد حال خودش جذاب و زیباست
چیزی که خیلی برام بولد شد، ملایم سازی سریال بود. کتاب مملو از توصیفات برهنگی، سکس و خشونته و آدم وقتی میبینه که اچ بی او سریال رو ساخته، توقع این شدت از ملایم سازی نداره. اگه مشکل فقط دخترهای سیزده ساله بود آدم درک میکرد ولی قضیه خیلی بیشتر از این حرفاست. و مسئله انتخاب ایمی آدامز برای نقش کمیل هست. آدامز بازیگر فوق العاده ایه، خصوصا برای نقشهایی که غم و ناراحتی درونی و مشکلات روانی دارند بهترین انتخاب هست، ولی با برهنگی کامل مشکل داره و این نقش به برهنگی نیاز داشت که مشکلات روانی کمیل بهتر نمایان بشه
در عین حال، نکته ی مثبت سریال فلش بک هایی هست که وجود داره و گذشته ی کمیل رو نشون میده
و اینکه پایان کتاب برای من غافل گیری نداشت. دلیلش هم سرنخ هایی هست که در روند داستان به خواننده داده میشه و به همین خاطر هم کتاب منطقی تر به پایان میرسه، چون توضیحاتی وجود داره که توی سریال نیست.
از طرف دیگه عنصر غافلگیری توی فیلم/سریال خیلی جذابتره.

پیشنهادم اینه که با توجه به گرونی کتاب، اول سریال رو ببینید و اگه از شخصیت اصلی خوشتون اومد و دوست داشتید بدونید توی ذهنش چی میگذره بعد کتاب رو بگیرید و اگر هم مسئله فقط پایان سریال بود، برید توی یه کتاب فروشی، دزدکی دو فصل آخرش رو بخونید و بزنید به چاک :))
و در آخر اونقدرا هم داستان خاصی نیست که زیادی به خودتون زحمت بدین. زیبا و غمناک هست ولی خارق العاده نیست