Sharp Objects

Written by Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects is a mystery novel with a suffocating atmosphere that is ultimately wasted by a plot that takes too long to become interesting. Its protagonist may be fascinating, but that doesn’t compensate for the slow pace at which her investigation is carried out.

The story follows reporter Camille Preaker when she is assigned to cover a series of murders and disappearances of children in her hometown of Wind Gap, where she needs to reencounter her family and her hateful mother.

The book opens by problematizing maternal love, reporting a case of neglect that led to the death of a woman’s offspring. The narrative is concerned with discussing assumptions and conventions related to gender: because they are dealing with a serial killer, for example, no one in Wind Gap believes that a woman can be the culprit. The police follow suit, claiming a woman doesn’t match the profile.

There’s a scene when, after hearing about the collective rape of a girl, a policeman claims to be surprised that the victim didn’t have to apologize to her aggressors in a city like Wind Gap. It’s a place where its own female citizens defend that a woman is born to be a mother – it’s her biological duty – and they are quick to judge negatively those who are not one. At a certain point, Camille, who is the fruit of Wind Gap, argues with a man who is defending thhat when a man has sex with a drunk woman he commits rape, calling him a chauvinist, because she thinks he is overprotecting women and taking away their autonomy. However, the true reasons for such an absurd statement are later revealed, giving a tragic air to the protagonist.

The relationship between Camille and her mother, Adora, is a very troubled one. They’ve become distant from one another, but that is seen through a positive angle, since any moment of contact between the two almost always comes down to reprimands and acid verbal attacks. The maternal love here is almost non-existent, resisting only because of Adora’s insistence on being occasionally affectionate, but almost as if out of obligation.

Camille is a complicated character, she suffers from a serious case of depression and commits violent acts against her own body. The book is narrated in the first person, immersing the reader in her self-deprecating thoughts (“I’m a second-rate journalist”) and in a suffocating atmosphere (“I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.”)

In this sense, Gillian is efficient in capturing the character’s hopelessness and lack of will to live, depriving her of any kind of emotional anchor. The character doesn’t want to go back to her hometown, which awakes terrible memories inside her, but her current life as a reporter is not much better, without pets, boyfriends, plants, and love for her work or hobbies. She is immersed in her own depression. When Camille goes to bathe, she describes her towel as “flimsy”, points the nozzle away from her, sits down, and watches someone’s pubic hair floating by.

Camille cuts herself, although she constantly condemns the act, feeling ashamed of the marks – which contributes to her depression, forming a depreciating cycle that feeds itself. The act sounds tragically inevitable, even if its form is somewhat eccentric – and it’s interesting to notice how the delay in revealing how it occurs mirrors the character’s desire to keep it a secret.

Not all of Camille’s characteristics are well developed, however. Her competition with her sister, who died too young, for example, never goes beyond Adora’s frustration, as she thinks in the lines of “My daughter who wanted so much to live died, while the one who wants to die continues to live” – an idea that is repeated every time the opportunity arises.

The book’s setting, on the other hand, is as suffocation as Camille’s point of view. The city of Wind Gap, whose most important events in its history are the murder of children, is rightly compared to a cemetery at a certain moment: “I passed the sign welcoming me to Wind Gap, the way kids do when they drive by cemeteries.” Meanwhile, its harmful effects on the protagonist are exposed in very clear terms: “Wind Gap was unhealthy for me. This home was unhealthy for me.”

If characters and atmosphere are together the highlights of the novel, the investigation part is its weakest link. The main problem with this part is that discoveries are made at a lethargic pace, with several interviews apparently leading nowhere, while the investigative work of the police remains hidden until the end. Therefore, any excitement surrounding the possibility of solving the crime keeps waning, which is made worse by Camille’s cold and distant personality, as she seems to be investigating for professional reasons only.

Wind Gap is a city where almost everyone has a rehearsed speech, although many of them are taken from TV shows, revealing ignorance and not something to hide. Camille comes from a city where everything is performance and pretense, which makes her investigation more challenging than usual. The narrative, however, rarely employs subtle elements to point at the main suspects, sometimes stating that a certain character has outbreaks of anger and signs of psychopathy, sometimes revealing that another one started acting “very strange” after the murders. The final revelation, then, fails to produce any impact as a twist, although it works thematically by tying the gender discussions raised throughout the narrative.

Sharp Objects is a mystery novel that works more as a drama than as a mystery. While its protagonist is fascinating with her troubled personality, and the discussions presented move towards an appropriate conclusion, the investigation itself is simply not exciting.

December 05, 2019.

Review originally published in Portuguese on September 13, 2018.