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A review by amandagstevens
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
2.0
Camille Preaker is a second-rate journalist sent to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to cover the murders of two little girls and, hopefully, redeem her career. And in typical character-driven murder-mystery style, she'll have to face her past to solve the present.
The setup in itself isn't really a problem. Yes, it's been done many times, but many stories have been written many times. However, the only things redeeming this book from a single-star rating are the overall competency of the narrative structure, the fact the author knew enough not to drag this on for longer than 250 pages, and the skilled sustaining of tension throughout. Tension is the only thing that got me through the book.
The prose is overwritten. The teeming mass of secondary characters are all stock, not one original. The dialogue is melodramatic (I laughed at one point when I was clearly supposed to be freaked out) and seasoned with cliches. Camille's thirteen-year-old half-sister Amma speaks like she's at least forty. I realize she's uncommonly intelligent and somewhat imitative of her mother, including speech patterns, which Camille notes, but I simply didn't buy any thirteen-year-old using words as she does. (Maybe if she'd been exorcised of a legion of demons at some point, I would have bought it? Demons in novels always use English formally and archaically.) An example, p. 223:
Camille: "You feel better, Amma?"
Amma (mockingly but still): "Oh, indeed I do, sister dear. I hope you feel well also."
This isn't the first book I've read (but I really hope it's the last) that, in the name of being "psychologically compelling," tries to pack as many disturbing human behaviors as possible into a few characters. The reader is obviously supposed to chalk everybody's erratic choices up to psychosis or past abuse. I didn't find one of the main characters believable. They're one-dimensional players in a melodrama, not flesh and blood people one could meet in real life.
In addition, the killer's identity is intended to be shocking, but I knew whodunit throughout the entire book. Almost literally as soon as I met this character, I knew. I don't think I've ever solved a mystery as fast I solved this one, though given the overwriting, I don't see how anyone could fail to solve it. Yet even then, the crime details didn't fit with the character's supposed motivation.
To say anymore would be to spoil the entire book, so I'll hide the rest of this review.
This novel did not compel me, emotionally or otherwise. It's hardly a human story of cleansing and healing old wounds (though the last paragraph seems to make an attempt in that direction). SHARP OBJECTS is a bath in a voyeuristic mud puddle.
The setup in itself isn't really a problem. Yes, it's been done many times, but many stories have been written many times. However, the only things redeeming this book from a single-star rating are the overall competency of the narrative structure, the fact the author knew enough not to drag this on for longer than 250 pages, and the skilled sustaining of tension throughout. Tension is the only thing that got me through the book.
The prose is overwritten. The teeming mass of secondary characters are all stock, not one original. The dialogue is melodramatic (I laughed at one point when I was clearly supposed to be freaked out) and seasoned with cliches. Camille's thirteen-year-old half-sister Amma speaks like she's at least forty. I realize she's uncommonly intelligent and somewhat imitative of her mother, including speech patterns, which Camille notes, but I simply didn't buy any thirteen-year-old using words as she does. (Maybe if she'd been exorcised of a legion of demons at some point, I would have bought it? Demons in novels always use English formally and archaically.) An example, p. 223:
Camille: "You feel better, Amma?"
Amma (mockingly but still): "Oh, indeed I do, sister dear. I hope you feel well also."
This isn't the first book I've read (but I really hope it's the last) that, in the name of being "psychologically compelling," tries to pack as many disturbing human behaviors as possible into a few characters. The reader is obviously supposed to chalk everybody's erratic choices up to psychosis or past abuse. I didn't find one of the main characters believable. They're one-dimensional players in a melodrama, not flesh and blood people one could meet in real life.
In addition, the killer's identity is intended to be shocking, but I knew whodunit throughout the entire book. Almost literally as soon as I met this character, I knew. I don't think I've ever solved a mystery as fast I solved this one, though given the overwriting, I don't see how anyone could fail to solve it. Yet even then, the crime details didn't fit with the character's supposed motivation.
To say anymore would be to spoil the entire book, so I'll hide the rest of this review.
Spoiler
Camille's cutting is certainly believable as a way she dealt with the emotional pain of losing Marian; so is her promiscuity from a young age as an attempt to be accepted and liked. But the author couldn't stop piling issues onto a character who already had two deep, valid ones. Oh, plus Camille is an alcoholic. Oh, plus Camille is sexually turned on by the combination of pornography and dead animals (when she's twelve!). Oh, plus Camille enjoys the physical sensation of vomiting. Oh, plus adult Camille is so needy she submits to a thirteen-year-old's peer pressure and gets high on Ecstasy after drinking and taking Oxycontin. Oh, plus thirty-year-old Camille has sex with an eighteen-year-old boy she doesn't know, because he's beautiful and has a dead sister, too. How. Many. Ways. Can an author screw up her protagonist? I do not like Camille. I do not want to. I can't see her as a person. She's merely a Pathology Field Day for her author.Spoiler
But there's more. Enter Amma the sociopath, raised by a mother with Munchausen By Proxy. Amma not only knows Adora is making her sick, but also revels in it as a way to exert control ("when you let people do things to you, you're really doing something to them"). That she's a sociopath, fine. But she's an overwritten sociopath, gleeful and maniacal to the point of caricature. ("I hurt!" she screams to Camille. "I love it!") I do buy her jealousy motivation in killing the girls. What I don't buy is that she shaved their legs and painted their toenails. As Richard The Token Cop For The Heroine To Sleep With says, this implies nurturing of the victims, possibly even remorse. It's a red herring to make us think the killer is Adora. And the teeth thing? It's not like human teeth are made of ivory, so ... Shrug to that one.This novel did not compel me, emotionally or otherwise. It's hardly a human story of cleansing and healing old wounds (though the last paragraph seems to make an attempt in that direction). SHARP OBJECTS is a bath in a voyeuristic mud puddle.