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Title: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Details: Copyright 2006, Random House
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story— and survive this homecoming."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'm a big fan of Gillian Flynn's work and this is, I think, the last of her work I hadn't read. And yes! You're right! I am on record as complaining frequently about how much I hate most "thriller"/crime fiction and how when you read/watch/listen to true crime it can make it even harder to read crime fiction even when it's not loaded with annoying stale tropes and twists you can see coming before you even open the book. Such is Flynn's talent that she has won me over time and again to a genre I don't usually like.
How I Liked It: CONTENT WARNING! THIS BOOK CONTAINS A CHARACTER WHO SELF-HARMS AND IT'S MENTIONED IN THE REVIEW. THE REVIEW ALSO CONTAINS A SLUR IN CONTEXT IN THE TEXT. PLEASE PROCEED ACCORDINGLY.
Have you ever listened to your favorite band's very early music? Or spied your favorite visual artist's early pieces, probably not meant for public consumption? What about your favorite actor in a possibly regrettable early role? It's strange to see the earliest work of people we admire. Some actively avoid it for fear it might taint their enjoyment of the artist's later work. Where does Gillian Flynn's first published work of fiction come down? Let's have a look!
Meet Camille Preaker, cub reporter for a small newspaper in Chicago trying to make it big (the newspaper, not Preaker) and urged by her encouraging boss to return to her small Missouri hometown to investigate the mysterious disappearances of two little girls.
Camille's past is a complicated one (including a recent stint in a psychiatric hospital), and she hasn't been back home in over a decade. We know Preaker's not quite right as it is, self harm scars and imaginary (and imagined) words trace over her body, she has sensory issues, and drinks alcohol almost constantly.
She was born out of wedlock to a rich society daughter and her unknown father was given a fake name by her mother (Newman Kennedy, after her favorite actor and favorite President) lest Camille try to track him down. Her mother married an equally rich society son when Camille was a toddler, Alan, a man who has never quite looked (and was never encouraged to look) at Camille as a daughter. A second daughter born a few years after Camille, her half sister Marian, died of a mysterious illness when Camille was in her early teens, and she barely knows her second half-sister, the thirteen-year-old Amma that seems to swerve terrifyingly between too young (baby talk and tantrums and clinging to a dollhouse replica of their mother's family estate) and too old (half dressed and partying with high school boys and drugs, along with a gang of girls her age she bullies and leads and leads to bully). Their mother Adora has enormous issues of her own, the extent to which Camille is only now realizing.
The entire town knows everyone's business and buzzes and watches, stories and rumors and gossip flying like gunshots throughout the town as Camille struggles to make any headway into the investigation. She is rebuffed repeatedly by the incompetent chief of police and makes little headway with a Kansas city investigator to whom she grows close.
As Camille investigates both the present and the past, both threaten to consume her until she discovers the truth, which is horrible and gets worse before it gets better. At last, all is revealed and Camille must pick up the pieces of her life, setting tentatively forward.
If I was surprised to find that The Grownup was a short story, I was even more surprised to discover that this book is so short in comparison to both Gone Girl and Dark Places. It's a scant 254 pages, which before I even began to read, quickly did some research and discovered that yes, this was indeed Flynn's first book. So how did she do?
Honestly, still quite well (and certainly far better than the last first fictional book by an author I read). She wasn't quite in the groove to make a masterpiece on the level of Dark Places or Gone Girl yet, but she definitely was getting there and had the energy (and the effusive praise of authors like Stephen King). The book explodes the usual stock characters and situations, mostly, and Flynn's excellent way with description is intact even this early in her career:
"Might be a homo that did it," he said. The word choice was actually a euphemism in these parts. (pg 20)
(It's horrible but you know what she means, I think.)
They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss. (pg 64)
That is excellent.
"I'm not quite done talking with Mr Nash."
"Yes, you are." Adora looked at Nash for confirmation, and he smiled awkwardly, like someone staring down the sun. (pg 94)
But there are a few things that still need some polish. The ending for one could've used tidying and expansion and there are just a few over-the-top bits that I feel a later Flynn would've grounded a bit for more impact.
Overall, though, it's still a hard-hitting, genuinely thrilling work of suspense and mystery that's incredibly vivid and has the Flynn freshness and novelty.
People may avoid the early work of their favorite artists, but I don't, and I'm glad. Not only do you get more of their magic, you get to appreciate how they refined that magic. At least in the case of Gillian Flynn.
Notable: In what a better book blog might call "SIGNS THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 2006 DEPARTMENT":
I phoned Richard on his cell, one of the few people in Wind Gap to own one, thought I shouldn't snipe, since I'm one of the only holdouts in Chicago. I just never want to be that reachable. (pg 159)
Final Grade: A-
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