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SHARP OBJECTS has a style that is both gripping and intensely claustrophobic, and at first I could not decide whether I was going to be able to ride out the sometimes too-brief sentences and the hemmed-in atmosphere they created. However, I persisted, and this book turned out to be one of the best crime novels I have read in a long time. First time author Gillian Flynn creates an almost anti-heroine in Camille Preaker, a 30-year-old journalist living in Chicago. Preaker is no charming private eye, but a painfully real character working on a newspaper that rarely gets any glory. She is sent by her friend and editor back to the home town she last saw eight years ago, and to a mother she regards with anything but fond memories. Camille’s demons are revealed early on as she proceeds to drink heavily, sat in a motel room 30 miles from her mother’s, preferring to spend the night in a strange place than with her family, which includes her step father Alan and her little-known half sister Amma. Flynn creates immediate suspense around the family, highlighting Camille’s reluctance not to have to see her mother, and the strange neutrality she has towards her stepfather. There is also no contact between them until Camille knocks on their door. Their meeting is delayed while Camille looks around the town of Wind Gap, trying to discover information about the girls who have been abducted and murdered, their teeth having been pulled out after death. The small town atmosphere is recreated perfectly through Flynn’s claustrophobic style. Although Camille is not a likeable character, empathy is developed through the first person narrative and the exposure of her demons. From the beginning she shows a strange habit of writing on her skin with a pen, sometimes repeating a word several times on her arm or leg, a habit that is disquietingly stomach-churning, especially as more details about her youth are revealed. Amma, Camille’s half sister, is a precocious 13-year-old, with a sinister grip on the town’s youth. She is cosseted by her mother, Adora, who has refused to attempt to recover from the death of her second daughter Marian. Marian is described regularly by Camille as being the favorite. Adora doted on Marian as she allowed her to take care of her during her constant sickness. Amma is similar whilst in the company of their mother, but outside of the house she becomes a different creature; the popular girl, the leader, who drinks, takes drugs and is promiscuous, three things that Camille can identify with from her own youth. There is very little detective work, the case of the dead girls proving stagnant. Camille develops a relationship with the detective brought in from the city, exchanging information about small town life for sound bites for her reports. Her strange family take over the narrative, involved somehow with the dead girls, but the reader is never sure to what extent. Camille’s relationship with her mother is often uncomfortable to read about, as Camille describes Adora administering home-made medications and washing her in hot baths. In the meantime, while the slow investigation continues with the town folk refusing to contemplate the notion that is could be an insider who has committed the murders, Camille slips into a mental prison; her behavior becoming increasingly unstable and desperate, all the time her mother passively dominant with a manner that creates suspicion in the reader’s mind, but with no real grounds. SHARP OBJECTS is not an easy read. It is far too claustrophobic, its atmosphere trapping and dense, mirroring Wind Gap itself. However, once you have got through the first 30 pages it becomes immensely gripping, captivating the reader into Camille’s strange and unsightly world. She is a frustrating narrator, but one with whom the reader develops a close relationship as she slowly reveals a little more each page, taking the reader into a nightmarish world that is almost too believable, cumulating in an explosive climax, which finally allows Camille some release. SHARP OBJECTS won the CWA New Blood Fiction Dagger and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.
Reviewed by Sarah Makin, October 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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