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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66559.Sharp_Objects_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Sharp Objects: A Novel" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170652330m/66559.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66559.Sharp_Objects_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Sharp Objects: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2383.Gillian_Flynn">Gillian Flynn</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25032488?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>The First Cut is the Deepest <br/>Gillian Flynn's stunning debut novel is so sharp the tip of its blade nicks bone. Sharp Objects is as good a first novel as I've read in a very long time—maybe ever. Though promoted as a mystery/thriller, the book is far more a character study of its heroine, Camille Preaker, her sick family, and the sinister secrets small towns conspire to keep. <br/> <br/>Fragile reporter, Camille Preaker is a cutter, but instead of slicing lines into her skin to release the buildup of tension inside her, she carves words into her flesh—Wicked above her hipbone, Girl across her heart. <br/> <br/>Words are like a road map to Camille'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. <br/> <br/>Nasty on her kneecap, Babydoll on her leg. <br/> <br/>Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriacal 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. <br/> <br/>Harmful on her wrist, Whore on her ankle. <br/> <br/>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. <br/> <br/>Given her childhood trauma, it's not surprising Camille cuts herself, writes words into the paper of her epidermis with sharp objects. What is surprising is that with a mother like hers she hasn't cut her throat or slit her wrists. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/>Gillian Flynn, whose day job is television critic for Entertainment Weekly, writes prose so poetic, descriptions do detailed, metaphors so revelatory you'd swear this couldn't be her first novel. In fact, the sharpest thing about Sharp Objects is Flynn's finely honed skills. Her knife-like pen must surely drip blood instead of ink—blood that flows through the veins of the living, breathing Camille and the other deeply developed, three-dimensional characters who inhabit Sharp Objects. <br/> <br/>Flynn's lush writing, finely wrought small town environs, and the “real” people who have been relegated to its purgatory-like prison are nearly flawless, and though some might call the ending of Sharp Objects predictable, I prefer to think of it as <br/>inevitable. <br/> <br/>Red Smith said, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Gillian Flynn has taken his advice. She has bled all over this astonishing work, but the self-inflicted wounds that gave birth to this book won't be the only ones. I suspect Sharp Objects will bury its blade in all who read it, but don't let that stop you from rushing out to buy it, for as Camille herself discovers we are our scars and those that don't kill us make us stronger (not to mention more interesting). <br/> <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1223758?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>