Sharp Objects [Hardcover]

Gillian Flynn is TV critic for US magazine Entertainment Weekly, but after the highly impressive thriller debut that is Sharp Objects, she may have to re-think the day job – particularly as such masters of the thriller as Harlan Coben and Stephen King are falling over each other to praise her novel.

Flynn’s conflicted heroine is journalist Camille Parker, who is holding down a job on a low-rent newspaper, convinced that she’s inspiring only feeling of disappointment in her editor, who has nursed unfulfilled hopes for her journalistic career. Camille, from a small town called Wind Gap in Missouri, sees herself as white trash, but actually hails from a moneyed family. To maintain her sanity, she has escaped from the town and her highly-strung, hypochondriac mother. But bad news beckons: she is summoned by her editor, who suggests she return to her home town to cover the abduction and murder of two young girls. Despite all her reservations (not least for her own mental equilibrium), she feels she must go, returning to the impressive Victorian mansion that was her home. She is quickly back in dangerous territory with her demanding mother – and reminding herself how she fell into a dark cycle of self-harm. Another problem is her Lolita-ish half-sister, a precocious teenager with a following of alienated girlfriends and some dark secrets of her own. Back in this destabilising territory, Camille is reminded of the childhood tragedy that left a mark on her. Looking into the deaths of the murdered girls, she starts to make big mistakes: going to bed with the investigator assigned to the case, and, worse, getting involved with the prime suspect, a disturbed teenager.

This heady brew of Southern gothic is dispatched with an assurance that totally belies the fact that this is a debut novel – and, what’s more, will have most readers hungry for more of Gillian Flynn’s individual brand of sexually-charged menace. --Barry Forshaw

'Flynn delivers a great whodunit, replete with hinting details, telling dialogue, dissembling clues. Better yet, she offers appalling, heartbreaking insight into the darkness of her women's lives: the Stepford polish of desperate housewives, the backstabbing viciousness of drug-gobbling, sex-for-favors Mean Girls, the simmering rage bound to boil over. Piercingly effective and genuinely terrifying.' (Starred Kirkus Review )

This impressive debut novel is fuelled by stylish writing and compelling portraits of desperate housewives, southern style... In a particularly seductive narrative style, Flynn adopts the cynical, knowing patter of a weary reporter, but it is her portraits of the town¿s backstabbing, social-climbing, bored, and bitchy females that provoke her sharpest and most entertaining writing. A stylish turn on dark crimes and even darker psyches. (Booklist )

To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild...a relentlessly creepy family saga. I found myself dreading the last thirty pages or so, but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights were out, the story just stayed there in my head, coiled and hissing, like a snake in a cave (Stephen King )

A stylish, and compelling debut. A real winner (Harlan Coben )

The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shockling, dreadful and memorable double ending. (PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY )

'Dark, intensely sinister and completely unputdownable, Sharp Objects is a compelling insight into the minds of not one, but of several troubled characters that remains compelling from first page to last and leaves the reader both moved and exhausted...Sharp Objects is going to be a novel that is hard to beat and its author, Gillian Flynn, is soon going to be a name to rank alongside Cornwell, Reichs and Hayder in the way her debut is set to take the crime world by storm.' 10/10 (Chris High )

'Sharp Objects is one of the freshest debut thrillers to come around in a long while. It's a gripping, substantive story, stripped of cliche, and crafted with great style. The characters are refreshingly real, burdened with psychological issues that enrich the story. And the ending, which I was positive I could predict, is unpredictable.' (Augusten Burroughs )

This is a stylish thriller about housewives who don't recognise their own desperations, while the reader recognizes with fascinated clarity the nastiness and vacuity of life in an updated Stepford. (Jessica Mann LITERARY REVIEW )

If you love Martha O'Connor look out for Gillian Flynn's debut, Sharp Objects...a gothic fairytale-gone-bad. (COMPANY (January 2007) )

Relentless, often creepy, but never less than real, this stylish and gripping tale will give you the shivers. (Maxim Jakubowski GUARDIAN (16.12.06) )

Flynn achieves a wonderful balance of wit and creepy suspense which makes Sharp Objects a sure winner (Margaret Murphy SHOTS )

compulsively disturbing. (Kate Riordan TIME OUT (3-10 January) )

it is a stunningly accomplished evocation of the oppressiveness of small-town life and is just as assured in depicting the gradually revealed psychological disorder that links Camille to both killer and victims. (John Dugdale SUNDAY TIMES (7.1.07) )

[a] striking first novel...a relentlessly dark tale, with some very disturbed characters, Camille among them, and it makes a powerful impact. (Susanna Jager SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (7.1.07) )

The dust jacket has such an eye-poppingly complimentary Stephen King quote that it's hard not to pick it up. But it's even harder to put down. This story of a singularly spine-chilling case is utterly gripping. This is a novel that doesn't just preoccupy you while you're reading it, but stays with you for days... it's a superb, if almost unbearable, piece of storytelling. (Alex Heminsley THELONDONPAPER (9.2.07) )

Dark debut is quite stunning. (Paul Connolly LONDON LITE (9.1.07) )

Flynn's debut novel grips like an iron fist from the start, partly because of the way she details the twitchy, colourless surfaces of a rural town where everyone knows each other's business but mainly because of the psychological acuity with which she draws her female characters...this is a great book and a compulsive thriller. (Claire Allfree METRO (18.1.07) )

[a] sinister and stylish psychological drama...Flynn brilliantly depicts the lurking malice and secrets of a small community as well as reminding us how scary teenage girls can be. (Carla McKay DAILY MAIL (19.1.07) )

"'Sharp Objects' is creepy, claustrophobic and dark as all hell. With a gloriously twisted plot, a brooding atmosphere and a beautifully realised central character, this is easily the best debut novel I've read in a very long time." Mark Billingham (Mark Billingham )

This is a fine debut novel. Bitter and unbelievably, grindingly sad. A major talent has arrived. (Mark Timlin INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY (28.1.07) )

'Sharp, clean exciting writing that grabs you from the first page. A real pleasure' (Kate Atkinson )

tremendously impressive writing. (Mat Coward MORNING STAR (6.3.07) )

an impressive debut (Crimetime )