This book is less of a Whodunit than it is an in depth
exploration of some deeply troubled minds. It's pretty clear from the beginning
of the book that the culprit is one of two people (both of whom end up
incarcerated). However, nobody is innocent. Everybody is troubled. Altogether, the
characters make up the cast of one of the darkest books I've read in quite some
time.
Not that it isn’t enjoyable, but I felt sort of nasty
reading while it. It's up close and personal; it's unflinching in its depiction
of what troubled people do to themselves and to others. And that's another
thing: some people self-damage while others feel an irresistible urge to maim
others. It's interesting in this book to find out which sort of person each of
the characters are.
Camille Preaker, a police reporter, has returned home to get
a head start on the story of what appears to be a serial killer. This is not
just any serial killer, though, but one that strangles young girls and removes
all of their teeth postmortem.
At first, I was a little irritated that the investigation
goes so slowly. Pages and chapters go by without any new information provided.
Long passages are devoted to reveries concerning Camille's past life. Long,
troubled reveries, incredibly sexual and violent in nature. At some point along
the way, I realized the story is less about the dead little girls than it is
about Camille confronting that past life.
I didn't necessarily like Camille's character. Aside from
the screwed up mentality (and her unique tendency to carve words into herself
all over her body), she's really rather drab. I can remember nothing about her
personality, nothing that doesn't come back to the madness of it all. She cuts;
she's a neat freak; she's a writer (crime journalist, evidently), but there's
nothing else.
At some point, even she acknowledges this. She has no
friends, no pets, not even a houseplant. She went off to college long before
the story started, became a non-person. Everything about her seems to exist in
the past. She had a brief lugubrious stint where she needed enough sex to satisfy forty people (apparently to the point where she also needed to lose her
virginity in eighth grade to four guys at once).
And her stepsister, Amma? She's meant to sound precocious
(if that could possibly be considered the right word), but hard drugs and
promiscuity at thirteen? She's worldly and ingenious. It really feels like she
knows too much, too much of the wrong kind of thing.
This book has a rather interesting perspective on the crazed
female mind. No one in the entire town, including the police force, truly
entertains the notion that the killer could be a woman. I don’t intend to give
spoilers, but this still demonstrates preconceived notions about women and
their instincts to be maternal.
It's hard to say much about this book-not because there
isn't a lot to say, but rather because the whole thing is so interwoven
together. Camille's character is greatly defined by her mother, and the
childhood death of one of her sisters rattles them all.
Sharp Objects is
compelling, truly. I hate it for its nastiness and love it for its
insatiability. Another thing: there are some pretty brutal images from a hog
farm Camille's mother owns. If I weren't already a vegetarian, I would become
one immediately.
