#30TubeReads: Sharp Object by Gillian Flynn
Even rereading this book sent chills down my spine.
I read a lot and I like to think that I have got pretty good taste in books. So I knew that at some point during #30TubeReads I would run across someone in the tube who had a similar taste in books to me. And I did. Albeit, it was someone with a similar taste to Diti from 8 years ago. Not to say that I did not absolutely love the experience of reading Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn once again. But some of my enjoyment came from the fact that I was nostalgic for the time that I read it first.
Confession Time: Some 7 years ago, two girls (my best friend and I) were literally thrown out (read: asked to leave, politely) of a Starbucks in Pune for sitting there for 4 and half hours, sharing just one good old-fashioned frappè between them. But their mission for the day went beyond just having a coffee. They were crafting the perfect letters to two authors they thought they were deeply in love with. (In hindsight, I am deeply concerned about my mental stability at that age but I’m going to compartmentalise that for a session with a therapist some time in the future.) They had just finished reading everything written by Gillian Flynn and Sharon Bolton, and they were enthralled.
We did not end up sending those letters. I think I still have drafts of them in a diary from 2016. Since then both authors have lost their shine and charm (because of their disinterest in anything shining or charming). Yet, they remain deliciously dark and devious and the books are still the kind that will keep you up at night to finish them and then for some more time because you cannot get the characters out of your head.
Flynn is most known for the absolute cult classic that is Gone Girl. And for good reason because there are some things about the book and its adaptation starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck that live in my head rent-free. (The ‘Cool Girl’ monologue, Flynn’s descriptions of how Nick discovers the extent of Amy’s mastermind plan, the Neil Patrick Harris and Pike scene, and just Pike’s mirror image close-ups at the beginning and end of the movie.) I think that has been one of my Roman Empire books ever since I’ve read it, even though it isn’t one that I talk about very often. I am a snob after all and refuse to admit that I like commercial psychological thrillers, unless I am writing about it on this blog.
This was all my long-winded way of saying that I find Gone Girl a genius example of the genre. But that does not compare to her exploration of the unhinged women in her other works in the same genre. Camille Preaker is unhinged in a way very different from Amy Dunne. She is bleak and traumatised from a very difficult childhood. She has a dark, grey outlook towards life. After the death of her sister, she finds release in marking her skin with words, permanently carving them with the ‘sharp objects’ of the title. Camille is complicated and layered. A protagonist that you cannot completely get behind because she herself is morally reprehensible. But that’s the power of Flynn’s writing. She gives you an extremely scarred and troubled character and asks you to root for her as she lets those traumas influence every action and thought.
A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.
Sharp Objects begins with a sharply witty scene in Camille’s workplace. She is a journalist and her wry editor orders her to go back to her hometown, Wind Gap, to investigate and write about two girls who went missing and were then found dead and without their teeth. Did I mention that she’s just out after a brief stint in a pysch ward? To make matter worse, Camille does not have a very good relationship with her neurotic and hypochondriac mother and still must live with her.
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
She also now has a 13-year old half sister who she knows nothing about but feels a sense of sympathy for because Camille is still feeling the repercussions of being being raised by her mother. But when she is installed in her childhood bedroom in Wind Gap she realises that she does not have much in common with her half-sister, who has somehow managed to charm the entire town, and instead finds herself relating to the missing teens.
I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.
Sharp Objects is a bleary exploration of the scars, both literal and psychological, that childhood leaves behind. Flynn gives you a puzzle to solve and at every turn you feel like you have found the answer. Yet, a few pages later with one small revelation she manages to throw you for a loop. It is not a book for the faint hearted, there are too many graphic descriptions for that. But it is a solid read and a real page turner. It is slow in places, the suspense building in the background, while it seems like nothing is really happening in the plot. However, this is intentional. The book has the effect that it does because of it choppy pacing, without which the story could have been anticlimactic or unsatisfactory.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.
The book is Flynn’s debut. If you have read her other works you can see the places in which she has improved since her first book. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that some of the tropes in her work are there just for the shock and disgust value. Her characters are all, unequivocally bad and unlikeable. However, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing these days.
Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.
“I support women’s rights, but most importantly I support women’s wrongs.” was a quote that I read on the internet a few months ago. As more and more readers reach out for books with unhinged, morally grey characters, I feel like Flynn might just have another day in the spotlight. The main character from Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation does not hold a candle to Camille Preaker. (The rise of the popularity of these book might be the content of many future therapy sessions across the globe but that’s possibly a conversation for another time.) I strongly believe that Sharp Objects must feature on lists of recommendations about such characters and tropes.
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.
Post Flynn’s success with Gone Girl several books in the psychological thriller/domestic thriller genre were published with names that featured the word ‘Girl’ to cash in on the former’s popularity. However, most of them (I am looking at you The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins and The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn.) could not live up to the expectations that are set when the author is touted to be the next Gillian Flynn. There has to be more depth to the characters and the psychological elements explored in the book that goes beyond just being dark and bleary. If you enjoy Flynn’s writing I would definitely recommend picking up Now You See Me by Sharon J. Bolton and the entire Lacey Flint series. Another important book that talks about the scars left behind my childhood trauma is My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. In my opinion, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh is a much more nuanced and gripping example of the unhinged woman trope that is so popular on Bookstagram and Booktok. Two books that shocked me by being devious, yet charming, were My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite and How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie. I am giving these recommendations assuming that you have already read Gone Girl and Dark Places by Flynn. If you haven’t, do yourself a favour and pick them up right away!
I actually wrote an essay on the popularity of Unhinged Women Trope during my Masters that I will upload as a separate blog. (Just a shameless plug!)
Third time’s the charm! Although it feels like I cheated because the first book that I enjoyed in the #30TubeReads challenge is one that I have read and loved before. I hope the person reading this book found it has gripping as I did and I’m glad she reminded me of a book that I once loved so much! I might not have enjoyed it as much as younger Diti but I still loved sinking my teeth into the dark story.