Book Tamers| book reviews

Sharp objects is, broadly, the story of a “crazy” family, a completely dysfunctional one. Where exactly could this rich, deeply rooted family could express itself better than in a Victorian house in a small American town?

It`s all in the family

Let’s see with who we are dealing with here. One will easily see I am not exaggerating at all. A terrifying grandmother, already dead, but whose presence is still felt; the mother, who feels the urge to take care of her children, so that the permanent illness of her second daughter, dead when the story is told, is, in a very weird way, the exact situation she needed; the youngest daughter, a sociopath, almost a doll in her mother’s house, pathologically craving for love, becoming an alcoholic, a drug addict and a nymphomaniac and a complete dread for the geek girls in her school, which she publicly humiliates.

Sharp Objects

The other challenged family member is Camille, the narrator herself, who deals with her mother’s “treatment” even though this means her own emotional balance will be shaken. This lack of balance manifests itself through the notching of words on each centimeter of her body. The sharp objects avoid only her face and that part of her arm which gets out of the sleeve and a circle on her back. In Chicago, away from her mother, Camille does not feel the need to hurt herself anymore. However, the disappearance of a little girl in her home town, preceded by the murder of another, determines the editor of the newspaper she works at to send her back home. It’s easy to imagine that things could only get worse.

Chasing mystery

“The investigation” is vividly exposed like various memories and their mix form a book of considerable length that I needed to end in a day and a half. But if you buy the book only considering the fact that Stephen King said it scared the hell out of him (I’m actually starting to have serious doubts about him being the author of his horror books) it would be so wrong. I was not scared at all. What got to me was especially the great amount of hints, admirably inserted exactly when you thought you found the murderer. A fashion show with skeletons in a little town’s inhabitants’ closets, on the catwalk of Camille’s mental sanity.

Oh, and yes! The ending…a book that catches you at the last pages is quite rare…

Written by Raluca