Sharp Objects Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B000J20U3G | Format: EPUB
Sharp Objects Description
WICKED above her hipbone,
GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker's troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, Camille's first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.
NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful 13-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.
HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, she will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.
With its taut, well-crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 9 hours and 37 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: September 20, 2006
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000J20U3G
I love a good psychological thriller with disturbingly flawed characters and this book did not disappoint. The main character is a woman struggling to make a life for herself, fleeing her childhood and really, fleeing her mother when she is sent back to her home town as an investigative reporter. She is tasked to report on the gruesome murders of two pre-teen girls, but in the process she gets put right back in the middle of her messed up family dynamics, her small town's social structure, and a potential romance.
Ms. Flynn nails perfectly small Midwest town life. A quote in her description of small town life,
"Like all rural towns, Wind Gap has an obsession with machinery. Most homes own a car and a half for every occupant, plus boats, Jet Skis, scooters, tractors, and among the elite of Wind Gap, golf cars, which younger kids without licenses use to whip around town."
Ms. Flynn makes some disturbing observations about parenting and family life - and ties them in to premature death:
As to the death of a young girl, "it's the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however will remain the purest form of family. Underground."
The situations described in this book are exceptional, but she breaks the image of small rural life as being ideal. Terrifying violence and dysfunction lurks beneath the surface and I have to say, she nailed it in terms of describing my small rural home town. As Flynn writes, the idealic quality of small towns is false. A question is - should people go home once they have fled extreme unhappiness? Can they go home and survive it emotionally?
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