“A child weaned on
poison considers harm a comfort”
‘Gone Girl’ fame Gillian Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects
(published in 2006) is set in Wind Gap, Missouri, the Midwestern US State. Wind
Gap is a typical viciously gossipy, class-ridden small town, whose local economy
is based on the sprawling hog farms and other live stock farms. Apart from the squeal of slaughtered pigs and
noise from drunken parties, Wind Gap is indefinitely cloaked in a peaceful lull.
However, that has been shattered with the killing of two preteen girls. The
first killing just seemed like an isolated incident. But a year later another
girl is brutally murdered, her teeth pulled out just like it was with the murder of the first
girl. Thirty-something Camille Preaker works as a police reporter in Chicago
Daily Post under chief-editor Curry, an affable father-figure. Since Camille is from Wind
Gap, Curry nudges her to cover the story. Moreover, other popular papers from Chicago
haven’t yet got wind of the story or may have not considered it news-worthy, so
it would be great if she could successfully cover it. Curry also wants
Camille to spend some time with her family and there’s a slight hint that she
doesn’t have good relationship with them, which actually turns out to be an
understatement when we later get to read certain acutely horrific details. Anyway,
she journeys to home sweet home to join the hunt for the possible
serial-killer, if not at least an attention-grabbing article.
Sharp Objects may appear to be a typical procedural with a
female-protagonist, in the vein of Dana Scully or Kay Scarpetta. But it’s not.
It definitely induces fairly good level of mystery to make us play the
‘guess-the-killer’ game, although what sets it apart from the other mainstream
crime literary fiction is the distinct as well as the achingly painful female gaze. We may
have read or seen many grim fictions dealing with the theme of ‘sins of
father’. Sharp Objects is about the sins of mothers or the irredeemable
feminine nastiness. Men in the novel either remain clueless to female meanness
and agonies, mired in their own pursuit for pleasures or succumb to the whims
of femininity. It actually might be considered as one of the novel’s flaw as the
men characters are mostly thrown away to the periphery, while the female
characters remain increasingly twisted. Nevertheless, I felt there’s a deep
psychological truth to these specific proceedings. The action that unfurls may be frighteningly
dramatized to serve the genre, but at its core Flynn unnervingly depicts the
relentless violence and agony a female body is subjected to (not just by bad
men).
“Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting
for the right moment to bloom”, says Camille Preaker who has lost her younger
sister Marian to physical illness, way back when they both were adolescents. Ever
since then, Camille’s illness of the mind has been a threatening factor. She is
a cutter; not just the one who slashes her wrists. Camille carves words
into her skin. Except for the unreachable patch of skin at the back, she has carved
words all over her body, each word an attempt to capture assortment of
emotional pains. And, these inscribed signifiers or the literal evocation of private
emotions quiver through her body whenever she goes through a tough or joyful
situation. Marian’s death is only a little part of Camille’s problem, the
biggest one being her frayed relationship with wealthy and manipulative mother
Adora. Camille hails from a family of rich land-owners who has always been in
the position to run the town. Adora and her husband Alan (Camille’s father’s
identity is unknown) has never worked a single day in their life, whose collective wealth
periodically increases due to the booming hog farms.
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| Author Gillian Flynn |
Adora has perpetually showcased emotional coldness towards
Camille, while Camille has been a defiant girl right from the childhood. Adora
also has a 13 year old daughter Amma whose sexual exploits and mean streak is
an infamous topic among the residents. Amma wears a nice-girl mask in front of
her mother and to Camille’s annoyance, Adora often cajoles Amma like a little
child. Not only Adora, but the town residents stay frigid to Camille’s attempts
to report the murder story. The town sheriff Vickery, a cranky old man,
dismisses her in an off-handed manner, although the FBI guy in the town Det.
Richard Willis takes a shine to Camille. Alas, he is tight-lipped when it comes
to providing solid scoops. Camille visits the regular cauldron of gossiping
circles in the town (her and Adora’s circle of friends) and uncovers few
unsettling truths about the dead girls. Before long, she understands that the
answers to the present-day crimes are wedged deep inside the dark past; her
very own past. Subsequently, the inevitable spiraling down is effectively
engineered with Flynn throwing in some classic plot twists.
Camille Preaker isn’t always a likeable character, especially
for readers of traditional crime fiction. Gillian Flynn takes us too close to
Camille’s inner demons or one could say that she explicitly details the
f**ked-up nature of the protagonist to makes us squirm with disquietude. There
are times I wanted to free myself of Camille’s gaze and horrific experiences
and just jump to the final chapters to find out who’s the killer (thankfully, I
didn’t surrender to that feeling). From mutilated skin to poisoned emotional
nature, Camille’s instability and penchant for making rash decisions constantly
keeps us on the edge. We definitely empathize for her in the end, but Flynn
deliberately turns the character into someone we don't immediately attach ourselves
to. The author doesn’t provide the typical voyeuristic pleasure in seeing the
beautiful protagonist (most of the characters are bowled-over by Camille's beauty)
unlocking a set of clues to solve the crime. The literal as well as figurative
sickness that pervades the town and Camille herself is portrayed in sharp details.
Female bodies usually in crime mystery fictions assign a very simple purpose:
to be either a victim whose murder & mutilation sets up the narrative or to
be a seductress, a femme fatale who willingly gives her body to the male
protagonist. Sharp Objects alternately infuses a fresh-spin to this banal
narrative and also cleverly subverts it.
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| Amy Adams plays Camille Preaker in the upcoming TV-series adaptation |
Flynn’s crafting of female self-identity and representation
of female bodies largely deviates from the regular narrative discourses. Women
in the novel aren’t just blank spaces who aren’t experienced as mere objects
that are either brutalized or glamorized. Flynn’s novels are often misconstrued
as misogynistic; a concrete proof of how nasty women could be if they are
allowed to run things. But these crime fictions are actually an effort to
broaden the rigid boundaries of feminist framework. Sharp Objects is truly
about the pervasive sexual violation and victimization of women. It chronicles
how stereotypes of femininity or rigid aesthetic perspective of female body can
create a nightmarish culture of sexually deviance and relentless violence. Camille,
Adora, Amma, and other females in the small-town are coerced to display the
accepted traits of femininity, which when combined with a rare yet truly
malevolent scenario boosts up the narrative’s terrifying quotient. I also liked
Flynn’s talent for darkly comic observations.
In a traditional
crime tale when two little girls are murdered, we expect the protagonist to be
deeply empathetic. But here there’s a casual cynicism in the way Camille
scrutinizes the victim’s family, especially when she comments on the
temperament of first victim's – Ann Nash – family. Ann is the third consecutive
daughter of the Nash family, who was followed by a boy. Camille in a matter of
fact tone says, “Three girls until, at last, their baby boy…..I pondered the
growing desperation the Nashes' must have felt each time a child popped out
without a penis”. These emotionally detached but sarcastic observations lighten up the
otherwise gloomy narrative. I wouldn’t say that the mystery element is perfect
or the killer’s identity is wholly unpredictable. Yet, what works in favor of
Sharp Objects (336 pages) is the distinct re-imagining of the femininity within
crime/murder mystery fiction and author Gillian Flynn’s sharp, acerbic
storytelling method [the novel is being turned into an 8-part mini-series with
Amy Adams playing the central role]. Definitely worth reading if you can digest
this kind of inescapable darkness.
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