camille

Goodreads Synopsis: 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 psych 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 thirteen-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, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.

I was on a mission to read this book and I must say that Gillian Flynn’s debut novel is much better than Gone Girl. Sharp Objects is darker and creepier without presenting itself with outright horror. The book is severely under appreciated because I couldn’t stop reading and finished it in a single day!

The characters are captivating in how disturbed they are. The family portrayed in the book is truly toxic. There are a lot of female characters who each have their own oddities, making them unforgettable. Camille’s rocky relationship with her mother and her mourning her sister Marian’s death are just some of the demons she has to battle on returning to her home town. Her mother Adora is sickeningly nurturing and has a pathological need to be needed, manifested in the form of munchausen by proxy, leading Camille to face the horrible truth about her past.

The story is built up well, giving the reader bits and pieces of Camille’s past, enough to blow our minds when the climactic realization of the truth hits Camille smack in the face. The small town of Wind Gap seems like a terrible place to have grown up and you can easily understand why Camille had issues with coming back to the place.

I think I was particularly interested in Amma, Camille’s half sister because of how differently she behaves when compared to average thirteen year olds. If you’ve read or watched Pretty Little Liars, she seems a little like Alison except perhaps that she’s ten times creepier. She may seem exaggerated on looking back but that is sort of the reason she is interesting when she is mentioned. You never know what Amma is thinking or how twisted she really is because all you do know is that there is something very wrong with her.

I wasn’t entirely convinced about Richard the cop. He seemed aloof and uninteresting when compared to the rest of the characters and did little to move the plot along despite his role in the ongoing investigation of the murder of the two little girls. In the end he does become irrelevant as Camille and him sever ties with one another despite having a brief sexual relationship while she is in Wind Gap.

It’s interesting how Flynn uses crude words to describe things especially when Camille says her mother pokes tweezers into her ankle wound. The images immediately flash in your mind in a grotesque manner but that’s just one of the many reasons to read the book. I think it’s what Gillian Flynn does best.

Rating: 4/5

I’d entered a French creative writing event at university and won second place for a short story I’d written called Camille. Unfortunately, I handed in the story and didn’t keep a copy for myself so I thought I’d convert whatever I remember from it into a flash fiction.

Un homme, Monsieur Baudelaire, qui habite pres d’une boutique de fleurs la visite tous les jours pour acheter une bouquet. La floriste lui reconnais et lui donne des fleurs-de-lis comme toujours et chaque jour, ell voit Monsieur Baudelaire marche vers sa maison. Mais elle ne sait pas qu’actuellement il va au cimitiere ou sa femme Camille reste. Parce qu’il ne peut pas oublier.