Sharp Objects

Here's Gillian Flynn's debut novel from 2006. I've now read all three of her books over the last eight months, each within a couple of days, which should say plenty about what compelling reads they are. And I'm not even that big on murder mysteries!

Yes, this one is a murder mystery, and a particularly dark one at that, just like Flynn's other two novels. And it's also set in Missouri. And it also contains some absolutely cold-blooded and nasty girls and women. And it also plays with the themes of wealth and privilege. Flynn's got her trademarks and signature elements fairly well established at this point, but there's a fine line between being known for certain storytelling quirks and falling into a formulaic rut. I'm not suggesting Flynn is in any danger of becoming stale and boring, or anything. Just that, as was the case a month ago when I read my third Khaled Hosseini book, recurring patterns have begun to jump out at me.

All in all, this was a solid and satisfying read, and at just 250 pages it's a pretty quick one, too. If I had one issue with the novel, it would be how a few seeds were planted early on to suggest that we were dealing with an unreliable narrator - conflicting memories, hallucinations, frequent vivid dreaming, and so on - only to amount to absolutely nothing. Not in a way that felt like a red herring, but in a manner that felt fairly unintentional; by the time the book had ended, I never felt like I was supposed to have doubted the main character's sanity or narrative honesty at all. It's not a huge deal, but it made the ending seem a little more obvious and the arcing mystery more crackable.

One passage that stood out to me came right in the middle of the book, in a random conversation the protagonist was having with a date. When her date suggested that a drunk girl had been raped by four men, the narrator - an otherwise progressive woman - jumped into a pretty vigorous victim blaming session, insisting that the girl allowed the sex to happen when she chose to get as drunk as she did. When her date began to argue with her, as I know I would argue with someone who shared the same opinion, she shut him right down by suggesting that it was anti-feminist of him to conclude that the rape victim became unable to give her consent for the acts just because she's been drinking a lot. The character's take was basically that if we really wanted to empower women, we'd allow them to get obscenely drunk and make poor decisions without victimizing them afterward. It's an interesting point; it's not one I'm sure I agree with, and I'm not even sure if the author believes it, but it was something I'd never really stopped to consider. By sharing the opinion that a substantially drunk woman has temporarily lost the ability to give her consent to potential sexual partners, am I being anti-feministic? I don't think so, but, look, it made me think about it, at least. Provocative!

Lastly, since I compulsively rank things, here's a quick ordering of Flynn's bibliography so far. First and best, by a hefty margin, was Gone Girl. If you haven't read it or seen it yet, check out Gone Girl. It's almost a toss up between the other two, but Sharp Objects comes out a hair ahead of Dark Places for me. Here's hoping for a fourth book soon enough, and also for the best one yet.