Sharp Objects

6/04/2017

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Blurb:

When two girls are abducted and killed in Missouri, journalist Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to report on the crimes. Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for years, Camille suddenly finds herself installed once again in her family's mansion, reacquainting herself with her distant mother and the half-sister she barely knows - a precocious 13-year-old who holds a disquieting grip on the town. 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.

Review:

"You were never such a good girl when you were little," she said. "You were always so willful. Maybe your spirit has gotten a bit more broken. In a good way. A necessary way."

This book is fundamentally and majorly fucked up. There really is no better way to put it. It's deeply unsettling and puts a radical dark spin on everything it touches. And Gillian Flynn does this masterfully, if you're into that sort of thing. I totally am. This book left me breathless.

In a few years you may find a Starbucks, which will bring the town what it yearns for: prepackaged, preapproved mainstream hipness.

I'll admit that the story was maybe a little (leetle) bit slow at first, it took me about 100 pages to be invested in it. That doesn't mean that the beginning was bad or anything but it was nothing compared to the ending. But, oh boy, once the story started hitting it did so real good. It made me feel like I was reading In the Woods again (which is a great sign), sometimes it made me even feel as uneasy as if I were reading a Megan Abbott book (which is a fantastic sign). I'm not saying Sharp Objects is like those other books but that they all evoked similar reactions in me.

"Someday I'll carve my name there."

It's hard to say anything about this book without spoiling it. I believe that it is especially important to experience the book without spoilers with Mystery and Thriller novels. Therefore, I won't go into much details but I'll say that I thought the reveal was kind of obvious. That doesn't and didn't bother me because this book didn't read like a whodunit but more like a whydunit or rather a "how did everything happen? what kind of horror was your life? tell me everything"it. Also, I really, really liked this kind of unique concept with which Flynn was able to get across Camille's feelings. Although cruel, it was very affective and pretty clever.