Sharp Objects is Gillian Flynn's first novel, and it's a must-read, because once you start it, finishing becomes obsessively compulsory.

  Reporter Camille Preaker is back on the job after a short vacation at a psychiatric hospital, where's she's been treated for "cutting" herself. She writes for a living, but in her spare time, Camille gets satisfaction from carving words onto her skin. She's in control now, but still gets urges to cut when the going gets tough.

  Her scars are fresh: "My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh."

  Thinking it should help her to visit her family and friends, Camille's Chicago editor assigns her to cover the murders of two girls in Wind Gap, Missouri, her hometown in the Bootheel. He also figures the newspaper will save money on hotel bills, since Camille can stay with her mom while on assignment.

  Camille agrees, uneasily. She needs to boost her standing as a reporter, and her familiarity with Wind Gap could help. But she's never been on good terms with her mother, and the murders in her hometown creep her out. The girls have been strangled, and their teeth removed.

    It turns out that Camille lost a sister to a mysterious illness when they were kids in Wind Gap. Her wealthy, domineering mother, who owns the town's hog farm/factory - a huge cutting operation - has never told Camille the name of her true father, who probably never knew she was born.

Camille's mom is cold to her and resents her for surviving her beloved sister. Over the years that Camille has been away from Wind Gap, her mom has been raising a half-sister who fiercely dominates her schoolmates and privately likes to watch hog butchering at Mom's slaughterhouse.

  As Camille tries to report on the investigation, she confronts memories from her troubled Wind Gap past, and we learn that cutting hasn't been her only vice. She's been around the block more than once, and now back in her mom's Victorian mansion in the old hometown, Camille finds herself on a psycho-rollercoaster that cuts past the murders and digs deep into her horrific past.

  After the twists and turns, who done it? You'll be guessing till the very end, and along the way there's booze, pills, taboo sex, and weird violence, all in a very addictive blend with Gothic undertones.

    Even Stephen King couldn't put Sharp Objects down, calling it "an admirably nasty piece of work, elevated by sharp writing and sharper insights."

Read our interview with Gillian Flynn.

Copyright 2006 Metropolitan Community College