Sharp Objects

After hearing so much about Gillian Flynn for years, I figured it was time I give her a try, and I started with this one since it was chosen by my book club. But I quickly realized this would be my first and only Flynn book.

I also realize this book has many, many fans. If you're a fan, you probably don't want to read the rest of my review, because I struggled with this one from the beginning.

Let's put aside the fact that the vast majority of characters here are flat and undeveloped to the extreme, ignore that the children waffle between acting/talking wildly younger than they are or quite a bit older, and forget about how totally rushed the pacing of the end is.

The plot itself is what I cannot get past. We're told our main character is show more a reporter at a major newspaper, in a big city where the job would be incredibly demanding and difficult to get to begin with, and yet there's not one moment in the book where the MC feels like she has a single reporter's instinct in her body. Worse, the way her job/newspaper operates is so far from being believable that it's laughable. A Chicago newspaper reporter wouldn't be paid her salary for journeying states away to follow one relatively minor story for weeks on end, no matter how lurid the story was, and only be expected to report in every few days and write one seems to be about a story a week. Newspapers would have gone out of business in a heartbeat, decades and decades ago, if they'd ever operated like that or paid reporters for so little work. Add in an editor who babies the reporter as though she's his own child (which would perhaps be more believable since he must be paying her for nothing out of pity, I suppose), and that very basic building block of the plot is just impossible to believe in.

By the end--when evidence is found and ignored by the detective until it feels convenient for the story to have him follow up on it with a search, and when all of the wrap-up/resolution depends on a note that shouldn't exist where it's found based on what we've learned about the situation surrounding the note--it becomes clear that Flynn is at her best when writing about a character's mental health (or lack thereof) and inner struggles, but the lazy plotting and the rushed ending make it impossible for me to understand how anyone can take this book seriously.

I don't know if developmental editors simply weren't involved, or if the author was given the freedom to ignore them, but what I find most frustrating is that I can think of a half-dozen ways this plot/story could have been made significantly more believable, and that's without trying and without doing anything that would require major rewrites.

I'm glad some people enjoyed this book--to each their own--but I'll be damned if I can understand how this got published in the state the plot is in. show less

“Sharp Objects” can be best described as Midwest Gothic, as Gillian Flynn does for Missouri what Flannery O’Connor did for the South. Aside from the weirdness of the setting, the best part of the book is the narrator. Camille isn’t a Poirot or a Holmes, flitting between mysteries removed and uninvolved. Instead, she’s inextricably linked to the story, and to her hometown. Because the protagonist isn’t some neutral audience surrogate to project on, it feels more like a real story about real people, as ridiculous as the actual events get. I like that she’s unlikeable, particularly one scene where she says some misogynist things to cover up for some underlying traumas which I won’t spoil, she’s not doe-eyed like most show more women in mystery novels and I respect Flynn for telling a story that lets women be as fucked up as the men are.

“Sharp Objects” itself has a compelling premise, but it really lags in the middle, as hundreds of pages go by without advancing the story at all. Some writers can get away with this, but I don’t think Flynn is a good enough writer for that. How many scenes of Camille going to bars or having sex do we need? The same story, and it is an interesting story, could have been told better with a little brevity. The first-person narration also really got on my nerves. The style often felt juvenile; I hate to use the cliché “show don’t tell” but that’s some advice this book needed sorely. If you’re going to use first person narration, please don’t tell me exactly how the character is feeling, it’s just not believable! show less

This book left me feeling slightly unwell. I've read a few murder mysteries whose grisliness was enough to turn the stomach, but in this case it was the sheer unsavouriness of the entire cast. Even the protagonist Camille - a journalist with a penchant for self-harming - I couldn't warm to. All the characters in the fictional Missouri town where the novel is set (I'm assuming it's fictional - no real location would stand for being portrayed like this) come across as grotesque caricatures. The whole thing made me want to take a shower.

Gillian Flynn can write, she knows how to tell a story, that's for sure. Her stuff is dark, twisted and complicated, baring the very worst in people. These are not people who are just selfish, insensitive or narcissistic. These are people who are beyond flawed. Flynn does not flinch from the horror of the situations she sets up either.

Written before Gone Girl, Sharp Objects is tighter with a more sympathetic protagonist. I could identify all too well with Camille's descent into her own personal hell when confronting the realization of who, and what, her mother is. There were moments when I teared up in sympathy.

This is disturbing, yet captivating reading. Flynn's books are not something I have sought out, and I can't say I'm sorry I show more read them but they are hard edged stories and not for the faint of heart. show less

I found Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn terrifying as this story felt like it could actually have happened. This is an extreme view of mother/daughter relationships, and in this case the psychopathic mother was able to damage three daughters, all in different ways but each equally tragic. The story is narrated by Camille who, upon the death of her sister, started cutting herself at 13. Her cutting developed into the writing of significant words all over her body. She is now in her early thirties, a newspaper reporter who has been sent back to her hometown to write about an a couple of gruesome murders that have two young girls as victims.

As Camille gathers information about the murders, the victims and their families, she also is show more becoming reacquainted with her own dysfunctional family and becoming more and more concerned about her younger step-sister, Amma. Although thirteen year old Amma is very precocious and can be very mean to others, Camille is afraid that her mother is making Amma and herself ill in order to nurse them while appearing to others to be a loving and concerned mother. As one nasty revelation after another is revealed, Camille believes she not only knows who the murderer is, she also knows why these particular young girls were targeted.

Sharp Objects was a spell-binding read, a whodunit that allows the reader to work out the details and fill in the missing pieces as the action mounts. There are moments of back-stabbing rage, cloying and false affections and out and out viciousness. This book is also a dark and revealing look at how mothers don’t always belong on a pedestal and small towns aren’t always safe places to raise a family. show less

This is a mystery crime thriller and it’s a messy, complicated family drama that digs much deeper than just figuring out who did it. I can see exactly why Flynn’s books translate so well to screen. The writing is so vivid and lived-in that I’ll be watching the series just to see how it compares to what I imagined. It’s clear how well-constructed the story is, but while reading, it felt slow and meandering. Knowing the full picture now, I think that pacing was intentional as an uneasy buildup toward a crescendo of stress and tension that pays off. I kept starting to like Camille, and then she’d make a decision that had me judging her all over again. There’s so much here about value, love, insecurity, caregiving, and control. show more It’s about how people’s worth gets tangled up in how lovable they seem. It’s not a feel-good book, it gnaws at some dark crevice in the brain, but it’s interesting, uncomfortable, and worth the read. I’m glad it was our third Claw Club book, nail girlies book club knows how to pick them. show less

I'm still processing how I felt about this book. Don't mistake five stars to signify enjoyment, rather it's respect: Gillian Flynn is doing something different. As far as I can tell, she's doing something different and creative and she's the best in her genre. I've never experienced anything quite like it.

Do I like it? I mean, I guess. I mean, kind of. I mean, I definitely wouldn't torture myself by rereading this book. I found it compulsive reading. Literally -- I would try to put it down, but I would keep thinking about it, about the characters, about the atmosphere, until I just had to pick it up and read more. It was the most disturbing thing I've ever read. You know how, when you're a tween/young teenager, and you and your friends show more tell gross out stories, because you've realized that the world can be dark and you're trying to figure out the boundaries? This book reads like this. Think of the most disturbing thing you can possibly think of, and that's this book.

On the one hand, that takes all the suspense out of the book, because you know the twist and turn to literally every mystery. On the other, there is all this tension as you read thinking: "Flynn cannot possibly be going there, right?" I was mostly relieved when Camille and Amma went home to Chicago, because I thought: thank goodness I was wrong and Adora was the killer, not Amma. And then I was a little disturbed that I came up with a more morbid ending than Flynn did. And then the final twist happened. And then the teeth went into the dollhouse, which was even more gruesome than I could have imagined

But honestly, I don't read anything just for the gross-out factor, psychological horror or the other type, so there's another reason that I stuck with this book, besides that it made me feel physically ill the way no other novel has succeeded. And that is, Flynn has something really interesting to say about female villains. Sharp Objects is an apt title -- Flynn explores the weapons that women, socialized out of traditional violence, use against themselves and each other and the deep damage that everyone involved sustains as a result. There are literal sharp objects: the knives that Camille uses to cut, girls who scratch with their nails, women and girls who bit, scissors that one of the victims once used to stab someone; and infinite metaphorical sharp objects.

Flynn had said in interviews that Gone Girl was the book in which she explored feminism by exploring female villains, but I didn't buy it when I read Gone Girl: Amy was too stereotypically evil and stereotypically female and I felt like it was derivative. But in Sharp Objects, Flynn clearly succeeds show less