Review: SHARP OBJECTS, Gillian Flynn

• this edition published by W&N 2018
• originally published in 2006
• ISBN 978-1-4746-0161-0
• 328 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Amazon)

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town.

Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

My Take

I remember the stir in crime fiction circles when this novel was first published, but somehow never got around to reading it.

And what a page turner it is!

Camille Preaker's editor of the Chicago paper she works for thinks she will benefit from returning to her home town of Wind Gap, 11 hours south of Chicago, to cover the story of the murder of two young girls. After all he can save money in accommodation as she can stay with her mother whom she hasn't talked to for 8 years. He thinks also that because she comes from the town that it will be easier for her to pick up rumours and insider information, A real recipe for disaster.

Camille feels neither safe nor welcome in her mother's house. She knows for example that her mother does not like her and there lies between them the memory of her younger sister Marian, who died a decade before. She is also haunted by her own memories of being a rebellious and hard to control teenager.

A good read.

My rating: 4.7

I've also read
4.8, GONE GIRL
4.2, THE GROWN UP
4.5, DARK PLACES

Review: DARK PLACES, Gillian Flynn

• this edition published by Random House 2009
• ISBN 978-0-307-34156-3
• 349 pages
• source: my local library
• author website

Synopsis (publisher)

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben.

Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.

My take

Libby Day's life has been a disaster - at 7 years of age she testified that her brother Ben, then 15, had killed her mother and and two sisters. The murders were horrific and Libby, the youngest of the family, was left traumatised. She first of all lived with her aunt and then in foster homes. Ben went prison for life and has been there for 25 years. Libby, haunted by the possibility that she was wrong in her testimony, has never wanted to visit him.

When Libby is contacted by Lyle from the Kill Club, she is not sure what he wants. She agrees to visit the club and finds that many of its members think that Ben was innocent of the crimes and certainly of the other things that Ben was accused of. To her own horror, she finds that she wants to know the truth, and paid by money provided by members of the Kill Club agrees to visit Ben in Gaol and then to track down people who might know what actually happened.

There is a lot of tension generated in the book as we read on two time frames: the present mainly through Libby's eyes, and a chronology of what happened in the last days and hours before the murders.

In places this is a very noir read, a truly nasty picture of what growing up in an impoverished family in Kansas in the mid 1980s was like. This book did remind me of Truman Capote's IN COLD BLOOD, also set in Kansas, and left me wondering if it was based on a true story. I'm still wondering: the Kill Club certainly exists. The novel also reminded me of SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE which I read a month or so back.

From Wikipedia: The novel deals with class issues in rural America, intense poverty and the Satanic cult hysteria that swept the United States in the 1980s. Dark Places was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and won the Dark Scribe Magazine Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year. It was also listed on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover fiction for two consecutive weeks. A film adaptation of the novel was released on August 7, 2015.

My Rating: 4.5

I've also read
4.8, GONE GIRL
4.2, THE GROWN UP 

Review: GONE GIRL, Gillian Flynn

• source: a Christmas Gift
• Published by Crown Publishers (Random House) 2012
• ISBN 978-0-307-58836-4
• 419 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

 Marriage can be a real killer.
One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.

Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.

My Take

The first focal point of GONE GIRL is the disappearance of Amy Elliott Dunne on the morning of their 5th wedding anniversary, with husband Nick later unable to satisfactorily explain where he was between just after breakfast and noon when he turned up at The Bar which he owns with his sister Go.

The novel is narrated alternately by Nick and Amy and between them they fill in the details of their backgrounds, courtship, and marriage, their loss of their jobs as journalists in New York as a result of the 2008 financial meltdown, their move to Nick's home town to assist with caring for his parents, both critically ill. Nick's narration basically begins with Amy's disappearance while much of Amy's story is told through a diary she has written. It is quite late in the book before the two time frames catch up with each other.

Gillian Flynn says "You might say I specialize in difficult characters. Damaged, disturbed, or downright nasty."
Just how damaged and nasty the main characters in GONE GIRL are, including Amy's parents, psychologists who have written a best-selling series of nauseous children's books about Amazing Amy, is revealed as the narration progresses, and the tension mounts.

Has Nick Dunne killed his missing wife? What amazed me was how successfully the author manipulated my opinions and how I swung like the proverbial pendulum.

Of course there is more to the novel than this but my lips are sealed.
Was it a good read? Well yes, particularly when it makes a few wayward turns, and has an ending that probably no reader would predict.
It isn't the best book I'll read in 2013 I'm sure, but it's not a bad start to the year.

My rating: 4.8

Another review to read: Reading Matters
Comments by the author on Amazon
Author's website