Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn, 2006
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A damaged Chicago reporter goes home to cover a small town's violence and finds her own family waiting. A low, plain-voiced dread gathers around family memory and small-town unease, with melancholy pressing through every scene.
Feels like dread, unease and melancholy. About family and memory.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy crime fiction that stays close to family damage and memory rather than procedure. The dread is unrelenting and the family unease is bleak, so it may not suit you if you want lighter crime reading.
Why read it
Flynn's debut shows the family unease and memory she would later sharpen, and it gives you a tense, plain-spoken crime story with real emotional weight.
A page from the book
The photograph you can no longer explain.
On the table by the door sat a photo of a preteen me holding Marian at about age seven. We’re both laughing. She has her eyes wide open in surprise, I have mine scrunched shut. I’m squeezing her into me, her short skinny legs dangling over my knees. I can’t remember the occasion or what we were laughing about. Over the years it’s become a pleasant mystery. I think I like not knowing. Gillian Flynn.Sharp Objects was Flynn's 2006 debut; she wrote it while working at Entertainment Weekly, years before Gone Girl.
Books that feel like this
More by Gillian Flynn
Το κορίτσι που εξαφανίστηκε
Gillian Flynn, 2012
Αιχμηρά αντικείμενα
Gillian Flynn, 2012
A reporter returns to the small town she fled, sent to cover two missing girls, and finds her own family waiting with its teeth bared.
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn, 2012
A marriage goes wrong in a Missouri river town, and every account of it is suspect. Read it for the voice, the fury, and the cool-eyed dread.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Sharp Objects for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy crime fiction that stays close to family damage and memory rather than procedure. The dread is unrelenting and the family unease is bleak, so it may not suit you if you want lighter crime reading.
- What is Sharp Objects like?
- A low, plain-voiced dread gathers around family memory and small-town unease, with melancholy pressing through every scene. Feels like dread, unease and melancholy. About family and memory.
- What should I read after Sharp Objects?
- If you liked Sharp Objects, try Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng), The Good Girl (Mary Kubica) and Before I Go to Sleep (S.J. Watson).
A taste of the feed
The relief of letting someone else carry your sadness, just for a moment.
But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don’t have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his.
The Good Girl · Mary Kubica
The particular dread of a long life that leaves nothing behind.
I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of collection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?
Before I Go to Sleep · S.J. Watson
To confront true darkness is to risk becoming part of what you fear.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
A Flicker in the Dark · Stacy Willingham
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