Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

It’s the politeness that I find most upsetting.

Ann was a true girl of Wind Gap, a town that demands utmost femininity in its fairer sex,

like an outpost on the edge of a despairing

She was like a girl’s very best doll, the kind you don’t play with. She

The grimy rubber tip of the old man’s cane. A pink mole on the back of the woman’s neck. The Band-Aid on Natalie Keene’s knee. I

In short, the Keene home looked too Missouri to be owned by Missourians.

“Got called out one time because Ann had killed a neighbor’s pet bird with a stick. She’d sharpened it herself with one of her daddy’s hunting knifes. Natalie, hell, her family moved here two years ago because she stabbed one of her classmates in the eye with a pair of scissors back in Philadelphia. Her daddy quit his job at some big business, just so they could start over. In the state where his granddad grew up. In a small town. Like a small town don’t come with its own set of problems.”

Problems always start long before you really, really see them.

me. I was no longer the pity case (with, how weird, the dead sister). I was the pretty girl (with, how sad, the dead sister). And so I was popular.

hated to point out to my mother that such was the nature of a bewildered, expiring ten-year-old. Why bother? It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It’s the kind of place that leaves a mark.

He’s as smooth and shallow as glass.

She wants all relationships in the house to run through her.

In Amma’s snideness, I caught a whiff of desperation and righteousness.

A silly flash of violence, like when Dee threw his tennis ball at me - you’re less shocked by the impact than the fact it happened at all. Jackie registered the hit with a wave of her hand and kept talking.

But the piggy middle child, who now waddled dazedly into the room, was destined for needy sex and snack-cake bingeing.

had shattered some delicate dynamic. A multichild household is a pit of petty jealousies, this I knew, and the Nash children were panicking at the idea of competing not just with one another, but with a dead sister.

It was a natural gift for Adora, making other women feel incidental.

It was a street several of my friends had lived on, slicing through town and growing increasingly more posh as it neared Adora’s.

Pigs are extremely smart, sociable creatures, and this forced assembly-line intimacy makes the nursing sows want to die. Which, as soon as they dry up, they do.

A woman is less likely to throw you out if she’s offered her hospitality. If you have allergies or a cold, asking for a tissue is even better. Women love vulnerability. Most women.

And sometimes drunk women aren’t raped; they just make stupid choices - and to say we deserve special treatment when we’re drunk because we’re women, to say we need to be looked after, I find offensive.”

Sometimes I think I won’t ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don’t have to worry about life anymore.

“Just an accident, really. Doing some work around the house. I’ll see my doctor this afternoon.” Of course she would. She’d go for a paper cut.

Her wheedling tone reminded me of just the kind of girls I was never comfortable with, the types who peddled a sort of plastic chumminess, who told me things about themselves only friends should know, who described themselves as “people persons.”

She’d always been one of those girls who wanted what anyone else had, even if she didn’t want it.

whatever kind of choices they want.” The women were looking dubiously at Becca when suddenly Mimi’s sobs popped up from her corner, and the attention, and Angie-with-the-wine, turned to her.

knew the feeling. When I’m on the edge of getting a good quote, it seems like I can almost reach inside the person’s mouth and pluck it off their tongue.

being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person.”

furrowed. She seemed on the edge of tears herself. “I know. It’s just that I’m wondering why you’ve decided to be nice to me now.” “Sometimes I can’t. But right now, I can. When everyone’s asleep and everything’s quiet, it’s easier.” She reached out, her hand like a butterfly before my face, then dropped it, patted me on the knee, and left.

I’m a guy and I can tell you teenage boys will sooner kill themselves than cry in public. And he’s been weeping it up all over town.”

“And now you come back and all I can think of is ‘Why Marian and not her?’”

“I learned at your feet.”

This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,”

“Amma worries she’ll shrivel up and blow away if attention isn’t always on her.

“They were darling girls, very well behaved and sweet little things. It’s like God plucked the best girls from Wind Gap to take to heaven for his own.”

I could see Meredith as a five-year-old, dressed as a princess and bitching because her favorite doll didn’t like her imaginary tea.

And Natalie was screaming like she was on fire. That screaming was scarier than the biting. Mr. Keene had to hold her down.

Some people would love to have the killer be a guy born and raised in Wind Gap. Someone they went fishing with once, someone they were in Cub Scouts with. Makes a better story.

know how jealous you’ve always been of anyone else’s well-being. It’s true, you know, you really are like Adora’s mother.

She was the kind of girl who exploited her cuteness with such joy you couldn’t begrudge her.

See, Curry, Detective Willis felt I was holding back some information and so he sulked off, like all men do when they don’t get their way with women they’ve fooled around with. “I screwed up. I’ll get it, though. I need a few more days before I file, Curry. Get a little more local color, work on this cop. I think they’re almost convinced a little press would help juice

was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved. Sometimes women do.

Plus, there was Amma and her mysterious friendliness toward me. I hated to admit it, but I was becoming obsessed with the girl.

“It’s not cool, Meredith. J.C. is not cool with this,” said a redhead who was either J.C.’s girlfriend or wanted to be.

She announced it as if she were helping break the ice between cocktail party guests: David owns his own dry-goods store, James just returned from an assignment in France, and, oh, yes, Camille

your age.” “Sometimes if you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them,”

“Safer to be feared than loved,”

Amma said with the exhausted affectation of a pampered housewife. “I’m bored all the time. That’s why I act out. I know

“There are better ways to deal with boredom and claustrophobia than to hurt,” I said. “You’re a smart girl, you know that.”