Book Review: Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects”

    I read Gillian Flynn’s three novels in nine days during a particularly slow week at school. When the teacher would stop talking or gave us free time, I immediately opened my computer and threw myself into Flynn’s sickening, dark narrative. Although “Gone Girl” and “Dark Places” were both fantastically disquieting and equally enjoyable, “Sharp Objects,” to me, stands out as Flynn’s best. 

In the novel, Camille Preaker is only 13 when her younger sister dies of some unknown illness. Living in a family where her outwardly regal mother obsesses over the death, Camille’s grief is dealt with by carving words into her own skin. It’s gory, morbid and more than a little disturbing, but not angsty in the least.

Flash forward 10 years or so, and Camille is sent back to her eerie, slow hometown of Wind Gap to report on two little girls that have gone missing, both turned up dead without their teeth. As a staff reporter, Camille has been doing a less than adequate job, and her editor, who is the closest thing to a father that she has, gives her the story in hopes that she will finally break away from her mediocre reporting.

But going back to her hometown also means facing her absolute worst nightmares; her mother, her younger half sibling, the terrifying happenings of Wind Gap and scariest of all, what really happened when her younger sister died. Insanity ensues.

The characters and the stories they have to tell will make you cringe, shiver and think about the people you surround yourself with. Camille isn’t a shining heroine; she’s supremely screwed up, just trying her best to make sense of all the strange events around her. In comparison with Flynn’s two other books, in which the characters are more tough, sure of themselves and are just bad people, this one portrays a character to whom every reader can connect and feel for and maybe identify themselves with. I think that is why this book is so strangely relatable.

For me, the most remarkable aspect of this book is that Flynn succeeds in creating nasty women. I am so used to books where “strong women” are ladies in fantastic outfits that talk, think and fight like men, delicate little homebodies with surprising reserves of strength, or raging nightmares. Not so in “Sharp Objects.” The women of Wind Gap are both victims and perpetrators. They are promiscuous and abusive, self-destructive and violent. In a world where women are victimized every single day, this book takes a completely different outlook, and it is deliciously frightening.

– By Ava Johnson