Sharp Objects (Sharp Objects: A Novel) Paperback – July 31, 2007

Very, very dark mystery/drama/thriller with twists and turns. Just what I was looking for. Very well written. Loved the characters.

(Original review appears in Pantheon Magazine at http://pantheonmag.com/book-review-sharp-objects-by-gillian-flynn/)At some point in most novels, a paragraph or single sentence, cleverly situated in a way that isn’t expository, etches in thumbnail the major theme of a work. The better ones find ways to incorporate it as direct function of character, as in the following:"I felt no particular allegiance to this town. This was the place my sister died, the place I started cutting myself. A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It’s the kind of place that leaves a mark."So muses Camille Preaker, Gillian Flynn’s restless reporter and sardonic anti-heroine from her debut novel, Sharp Objects. With the current buzz still humming over her latest book, Gone Girl—with film adaptation by David Fincher slated for October of 2014—revisiting her first book seems an apropos primer of this dark and penetrating author.Camille’s a journalist for The Daily Post, the “fourth largest in Chicago,” a newspaper with its head barely above water, and whose editor, Frank Curry, mines the cold-case files for the next human interest tale sure to snag a Pulitzer. When the disappearance of a second girl occurs in the town of Wind Gap, Missouri, he dispatches the reluctant Camille at once to get the scoop.There’s only one problem: Wind Gap is Camille’s home town. Wind Gap hasn’t been good to Camille, a place she has shunned for eight years. A place she describes as “One of those crummy towns prone to misery.” She says this not from dread, but from a quietly haunting intimacy with torment. At the start of the novel, we learn that Camille’s been freshly released into the world after spending several months under psychiatric care. She’s a cutter, specifically of words. Her body is a monument to insecurity and anger, starting at the age of thirteen with Wicked carved into her left hip, and stopping at twenty-nine with Vanish. The only unmarred spot on her body is a circle of perfect skin the size of a fist, on the small of her back which she could never reach.As with most any self-mutilation, it’s but the physical manifestation of deeper emotional traumas, in Camille’s case prompted by the death of her younger sister, Marian, from an ambiguous illness. The tension surrounding this mysterious passing serves as lynchpin for her strained relationship with her mother, Adora, Wind Gap’s unspoken matriarch. Wealthy, priggish, steeped in passive-aggressiveness and secrets, Adora is never sparing of her disdain for Camille, telling her in a casual manner: “You remind me of my mother. Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me either. And if you girls won’t love me, I won’t love you.”The other of the girls she refers to is Camille’s half-sister, Amma, a sexually hyper-developed thirteen year-old who heads a clique of equally spiteful girls, and who in many ways is her mother’s equal in cruelty and malice.Rattling between the warring factions of her mother and step-sister, Camille attempts to investigate the abduction-murders in Wind Gap. When the missing girl, Ann Nash, turns up dead not long after her arrival in town—found strangled within a cleft between two buildings, her teeth yanked out (a virtual carbon-copy of the first victim, Natalie Keen)—Camille finds little help from the male authorities. Men view her as suspicious, an outsider with a dubious agenda, yet the scorn doesn’t surprise or upset Camille. She’s used to it. Other than her boss, Frank, who’s a well-meaning but scattershot father-figure, men are often portrayed as dichotomies rather than with any subtlety or depth. They’re afterthoughts, fleeting, a part of the scenery. This isn’t a detriment to the book; they are as Camille sees them based on her experiences. Bill Vickery, the police chief, is an all-business cipher, dismissive of theories that don’t fit his own. The fathers in the book, namely those of the two victims, as well as her own step-father, Alan, are ineffectual and milquetoast. Even one of the chief suspects, the second victim’s father, Bob Nash, is such a laconic wallflower that even Camille’s suspicion of him is passive.Her impulse is to be drawn towards the damaged sorts. The dark and the indifferent. She says of some teenage boys preening on the street: "Those kids, cocky and pissed and smelling like sweat, aggressively oblivious of our existence, always compelled me."Two men eventually serve this function for Camille. The first is a cocksure detective visiting from Kansas City, Richard Willis. His interest in Camille is obvious to her from the start, and though attracted to him as well, she’s apprehensive. She keeps him at arm’s length, at first engaging in a mutual pact of information gathering from his end in exchange for company and candor from hers. But the dearth of intimacy in her life eventually topples the pact into the sexual, albeit mostly clothed in Camille’s case, as she’s reluctant to let any man know that she’s a cutter.That revelation is ultimately bestowed upon John Keen, the second victim’s older brother and on-again, off-again murder suspect in what passes for the book’s most tender, affectionate scene in a roadside motel.It isn’t long though before Camille realizes that her best chance to secure clues or leads resides within the secretive cliques of female enmity prevalent in Wind Gap. It is a private world where women hurt each other both overtly and passively, even at funerals. Where gossip is both weapon and shield, wielded for social advancement. This antagonism lies at the core of Sharp Objects. The book is less murder mystery and more an exploration of the cruelty that women inflict upon one another, be it friend to friend, classmate to classmate, sister to sister, or mother to daughter—all of which play a role, often spanning multiple generations.Not even the two murder victims are immune from this hostility, as it is gradually learned through Camille’s piecemeal interrogations of witnesses and suspects. The first victim, Natalie, had assaulted a female classmate back in Philadelphia; “They saved her left eye,” is all we’re left to know. The second victim, Natalie, is a chronic biter, one of her victims being Adora who used to watch over both girls at different points, thus relegating her eventually to the suspect list.But the cruelty isn’t limited to others. They’re just as adept in dispensing it upon themselves. Self-abuse runs rampant, from Adora’s intractable plucking out of her eyebrows while tending to her dying daughter, Marian, to Camille’s equally impulsive drinking and cutting, the latter acting as a coping refrain throughout.Number of synonyms for “anxious” carved in my skin: eleven, she ponders at one point. Later on it’s, Unworthy flared up in my leg, followed by, Belittle burned on my right hip, and so the scoring goes.At the heart of it all burns a generational war over control, status, and vanity. Camille and Adora’s relationship, cleaved forever with the death of Marian, is in a persistent state of escalation, even in absentia. Upon Camille’s return to Wind Gap, Adora wastes no time exercising all the petty cruelties and power-plays while shamelessly utilizing the plausible deniability of victimhood, all of which Camille is privy to from the get go.Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother, and this more than anything about her turns my stomach.Adora’s grief at having lost Marian has become a virtual hobby, one that she attempts to relive again through her two other daughters. Camille soon realizes that the milk and pills Adora’s been giving them both as “relaxants,” are in actuality making them sicker by the day, especially Amma who’s been subjected to it longer. This prompts Camille to track down the nurse that ministered to Marian during her final days, and through the rediscovering of original medical files that had been tampered with, it is learned that Adora had been slowly poisoning her first daughter for years.Much of this serves the logistical and procedural facets of the book however, which in many respects is the least important aspect of an otherwise compelling but ruthless character study of a woman at war to wrest her identity from history and genetics. When the killer of the two girls is eventually “revealed,” you’re more beleaguered by the inevitability of it than you are shocked. But it’s only because Flynn has artfully played with genre expectations and structures to lead one to such a conclusion. A twist is added near the end that upends the original reveal, and it’s a shocking revelation if unexpected, a sad one if anticipated. A kind of perverse circle has closed, and in the middle sits Camille, perhaps finally with the determination to pierce through it.

“Sharp Objects” was my first Gillian Flynn book, and wow, what an introduction. I wasn’t sure what to expect after being underwhelmed by the Gone Girl film, but this one grabbed me and didn’t let go. I finished it in under 48 hours (and that between packing for a New Year’s family trip and the usual daily chaos).Even on a 6-hour car ride (thank you, holiday traffic), with 3 kids bickering in the back, I barely noticed the noise. That’s how intense this book is. At the same time, it’s so dark and unsettling that I kept checking on my kids, who are close in age to the victims, just to reassure myself they were fine.Flynn nails the suffocating small-town vibe, with creepy characters and a twisted family dynamic that keeps you hooked. It’s disturbing, sure, but in the best way. I’m so glad I read the book before diving into the TV series. Highly recommend it if you like your thrillers gritty and impossible to put down.

This was kind of a letdown for me.The plot was okay. The lead character was very damaged, but the more you read the easier it is to understand why. Her past haunts her, and I think the author does a good job showing that.That being said, the rest of the characters feel off. The little sister acts less like an actual thirteen year old, and more like the media's nightmare of teenagers today. Promiscuous, taking drugs, speaking like an adult. I had a hard time reading her and her friends as thirteen. They just didn't feel like real kids. The author kept focusing on their breasts as well. Almost every scene they appeared the author would focus on their "woman-like bodies", then sharply remind the reader they are thirteen.Well, maybe that was supposed to be some commentary about society sexualizing young women earlier and earlier, but I felt that was kind of missed. Most thirteen year old girls don't act like nineteen year old girls in college. And it was uncomfortable reading about their tits every time the character walked on screen.The step-father was a cartoon. He hardly reacted like a normal person to anything. His few scenes were so forgettable. I can't recall if the author even mentions what he does in the house all day when he isn't slurping the blandest, mushiest food. He's a ghost, appearing only when needed to make the lead character uncomfortable. Forgotten when not needed.There is a lot less focus on evidence in this case, like a normal crime novel, and much more on the lead character figuring out her feelings, her relationship with her family, and interacting with friends from the past. My problem with that is most of the characters are so bland they are entirely forgettable once they're offscreen. I had trouble following which high school friend she was visiting and why I should care.The detective is your basic romantic lead, not the guy the heroine usually goes for but juuuuuust different enough she is attracted to him. I guess she's pretty but I don't think that's a good enough reason for him to take interest in her. He can tell she's a mess and you would think he would have been more professional.The one scene I felt her have an actual connection was with the brother of one of the victims. That scene was much more powerful than any scene with the detective. Despite the age difference and general issues with that interaction, at least it was interesting.This review focuses a lot on the characters, but that is because that's all that is in the book. The plot is very straightforward. The mystery is pretty much solved, the book follows the lead figuring it out emotionally. An interesting enough read, but the entire time I felt myself wishing for something more.Final thoughts:The writing is ok. Dialogue is not this book's strong point, conversations sometimes feel a little too pre-thought out and dramatically timed. The characters are what they are, if you were like me you'll wonder why no one has slapped the mother yet. I started to highlight her abusive, narcissistic comments she made to her daughter. It's frustrating to read the daughter just take the abuse. The ending is disappointing, as seems to be this author's forte. It's not as frustrating or silly as Gone Girl, but still a bit sour. The takeaway is at least the lead character might be finally free from an abusive history.It's decent for an afternoon read; and if you don't think too hard.