Deluded Review – Sharp Objects
About the Book Sharp Objects
- Written by Gillian Flynn
- 254 pages
- Published September 26th 2006
From Goodreads: 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.
My Review
Overall, I thought Sharp Objects was a pretty good book. There were slow parts, there were parts that required immense suspension of disbelief, and there were abandoned plot threads, but I was able to overlook all of this with the great storytelling and creation of characters.
Camille, like all female characters created by Flynn, is a troubled female with a dark past. I do like that about the author; she seems committed to giving females more interesting lives and stories. No longer is the male figure the only one who can have deep and dark inner issues.
Anyway, Camille is sent back to her hometown to cover a string of child murders. While this mystery is the main focus of the book, the driving force is the relationship between her and her mother and sister. As she investigates and interviews community members, we see further and further into her confusing childhood. While this middle part is a bit slow, it is easy to read and ultimately satisfying come the ending.
As Camille forges a relationship with the lead detective on the case and gets to know her little sister better, she starts to realize that maybe the killer is closer to her than she realized… dun dun dun!
Ok, the killer was actually her sister. This is where the book got me. It seems HIGHLY unlikely that a 13 year old would be able to commit such terrible crimes WITHOUT getting caught. I’m not sure how an entire group of young girls could be so corrupted to start killing even younger girls and then not even feel bad enough about it to turn themselves in. The whole thing just seems too unrealistic.
Always, can we just talk about how ridiculous these girls are, even without the murderous inclinations? I know times have changed since I was a girl, but I never heard of any pre-teen doing hardcore drugs on the norm and pimping out friends and slutting it up. Amma’s transition from porn star to adorable little innocent baby girl when she was around Adora was so shocking, it was just eye-rolling bad characterization. And where are the adults in this town? Ok, maybe Adora isn’t the best parent, but what about the other girls? Does no one care that these children are a menace to society and themselves? Sorry, that whole thing just wasn’t working for me.
The big “twist” at the end wasn’t really that shocking. The first character that the murders are pinned on turns out to be innocent (mostly) until the second character slips up and takes another life. It seemed kind of obvious to me from the beginning that both of these characters were no good and were probably involved in some way. However, it was still interesting to follow the story and see just how messed up these people were (HINT: very).
Do I think that it is better than Gone Girl? No, not really. You can tell that this is Flynn’s first novel; it has plot weaknesses and doesn’t have the flow and characterization found in Gone Girl.
