Sharp Objects

Camille begins by commenting on Amma’s “violent streak—the tantrum, the smacking of her friend, and now this ugliness. A penchant for doing and seeing nasty things,” and how these qualities have made Camille personally interested in Amma’s life (101). Camille then goes to the Keenes’ house, hoping to get a comment, noting that Curry might pull her out of Wind Gap if she doesn’t write her story soon. Mrs. Keene invites Camille in, not knowing that she works for the paper. However, once she finds out, she kicks her out of her house. Once outside, Camille runs into Meredith Wheeler, a beautiful teenager who is dating Natalie’s older brother, John Keene. It’s clear that Meredith knows of Camille because she used to be the most beautiful, popular girl in town, and Meredith has always looked up to her idea of her. Meredith tells Camille that she’ll get John to talk to her.

Richard and Camille meet for dinner at a family restaurant called Gritty’s. Their waitress is Kathy, Camille’s old high school acquaintance. Kathy brings them beers, and Richard asks Camille to tell him about the violence in Wind Gap. Camille immediately tells Richard about a woman biting a child’s cheek, but she doesn’t tell him that the woman was her mother. She also tells him that “Once, an eighth-grade girl got drunk at a high-school party and four or five guys on the football team had sex with her, kind of passed her around,” but she doesn’t tell him that the 8th-grade girl was her (109).

They leave the restaurant and go to Garrett Park, the place where Natalie was last seen alive and where kids come to get into trouble. Camille silently remembers how she had not only her first kiss at the park, but also “my first blow job, at age thirteen. A senior on the baseball team took me under his wing, then took me into the woods. He wouldn’t kiss me until I serviced him. Then he wouldn’t kiss me because of where my mouth had been” (112). Richard asks Camille if her mom had ever hurt her when she was a child, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, Amma and her friends show up wearing miniskirts and tube tops. Camille notes Amma’s “peach skin, so free of blotches or wrinkles, her face so perfect and character-free she could have just popped out of the womb” (114). Amma makes sexual remarks to Richard, calling him “Dick,” and he and Camille leave (115).

Camille awakes to her mother chastising Gayla, her maid, for not watering the rose garden enough. Adora tells Camille that she is taking her dress shopping for an upcoming party she’s throwing. Adora cuts her hand on a rose thorn and makes a show of wrapping her wound in bandages. As Camille and Adora are driving to the store, they see Amma and pick her up. Once at the store, Adora forces Camille to try on clothes that will reveal her scarred body. Inside the dressing room, Camille doesn’t want to show Adora what the dresses look like on, but after her mom won’t stop insisting Camille opens the dressing room door. Adora stands aghast at the sight of Camille’s scarred body. Amma seems intrigued.

Once at home, Adora shuts herself in her room and Camille contemplates the knife drawer. Meredith Wheeler and John Keene show up at the door, and Camille feels like she’s been “caught masturbating” (122). Camille notices that John is “truly beautiful, almost androgynous, tall and slim with obscurely full lips and ice-colored eyes” (122). Camille tries to get John to describe Natalie’s personality, but Meredith keeps interjecting, demonstrating that she wants the interview to be about her. Camille is getting annoyed, but finally John talks about how his sister was a tomboy, a weirdo, and that she used to be friends with Amma. Camille is shocked to hear this because Amma seemed to hate Natalie. Camille mentions the fact that John doesn’t have an alibi for the night of Natalie’s murder, and that some people in town think he’s the killer. He denies it, and Camille believes him. It’s also revealed that Natalie once stabbed a former classmate in the eyes with scissors, and that her family moved to Wind Gap to give Natalie a fresh start.

That night, Camille hears Amma and Adora arguing upstairs. Camille’s old friend, Katie Lacey, calls and invites Camille over for a Pity Party, where they will “Drink a bunch of wine, watch a sad movie, cry, gossip” (129). Camille decides to go, hoping to get some information for her article. Camille watches judgmentally as the women drink and cry about selfish things, and one of the women reveals that Amma and her friends bullied Ann by making her show her “privates to the boys” (133).

Back at home, Camille starts thinking about all the horrible things in her life—her scars, her lack of children, the murders, her mother’s biting the baby, her sister’s death, and Amma’s cruelness—and for the first time since being back in Wind Gap, Camille cries. Amma knocks on Camille’s door, interrupting her crying. Amma asks to see her cuts, but Camille says no. Amma tells Camille that sometimes she (Amma) can be nice. 

The chapter opens with Camille’s recently published article, which heavily quotes John Keene. Camille sits in her room, waiting expectantly for angry phone calls from the locals, and ends up thinking about how there is always laundry being done in the basement. She thinks about how it’s probably a “lingering habit from Marian’s lifetime. Crisp clean clothes to make us forget all the drips and dank smells that come from our bodies. I was in college by the time I realized I liked the smell of sex” (139). Camille’s first and only angry caller is Meredith, who is mad that Camille didn’t quote her in the story. Meredith tells Camille that she should meet with her again, so that she can tell Camille things about Natalie that John wouldn’t say.

On the porch, Amma is laying her head in Adora’s lap. Adora says that Amma is sick, and blames it on Camille’s lack of getting to know Amma. Camille leaves the house and runs into Richard. He asks her to get into his car because he needs a Wind Gap tour guide. She agrees, and in turn he agrees to answer three questions for her, truthfully, but off record. Richard asks Camille to lead him to “all the town’s secret places, the nooks that only locals know about. Places where people meet to screw or smoke dope, where teens drink, or folks go to sit by themselves and decide where their lives had unraveled” (142). This makes Camille think about how “[e]veryone has a moment where life goes off the rails. Mine was when Marian died. The day I picked up that knife is a tight second” (143).

Camille takes Richard to an abandoned one-room schoolhouse in the middle of the woods. Richard tells Camille that she’s beautiful and then kisses her. She licks his neck, and there is a palpable sexual tension in the air. Camille takes him to other secret places in the woods, including an old hunting shed and the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. Camille asks him if the girls were dead before the teeth were pulled, and he says yes. It’s nighttime when Richard takes Camille home. With her zipper down, she guides his hand to her “clitoris and held there lest he explore and bump into the raised outlines of scars. We got each other off like a couple of schoolkids” (147).

Camille comes inside and Adora tells her that she finally realizes why she never loved her: “You remind me of my mother, Joya. Cold and distant and so, so smug. My mother never loved me, either. And if you girls won’t love me, I won’t love you” (148). Camille is visibly shaken by her mom’s revelation, but her mom continues by saying that she only tried to be close to the dead girls because they reminded her of Camille. She says, “Like pretty little animals. I thought if I could be close with them, I would understand you better. If I could like them, maybe I could like you. But I couldn’t” (149). After further belittling Camille, her mother reaches behind Camille’s back and, with her fingernail, traces the one spot of skin that isn’t cut. She says that one day she’ll carve her name there.

She drinks herself to sleep that night, and the next morning she goes to Meredith’s house. She walks around to the backyard and spies Amma, her friends, and John sitting by the pool. She thinks about how “[c]onfronted with all that smooth flesh, I could feel my skin begin its chattering” (151). She stays hidden and watches Amma expose her breast to John. He watches and tells Amma that “I like to keep an eye on you, Amma. Always know I have my eye on you” (152). Camille interprets this as flirting, which disturbs her since John is eighteen and Amma only thirteen. Camille walks into view, and she and John begin talking. It’s clear they have a connection that revolves around both having a deceased little sister.

Camille ends up interviewing Meredith without John, and she reveals that Natalie once bit her palm and took a chunk out of her earlobe. Natalie also once bit Adora’s wrist, and she had to get stitches. 

Richard and Camille talk on the phone, and he reveals that he was in a hospital in Woodberry but he won’t say why. They meet for drinks that night, but before Richard shows up Camille drinks with some male acquaintances from high school. Camille asks Richard if he thinks that a male or female is responsible for the killings, and he says that he doesn’t believe a woman fits the profile for the murders. She tells him that Natalie bit the earlobe off someone, but she won’t tell him who, which causes him to become angry with her. He leaves Camille alone at the bar.

When Camille gets home, Alan is waiting for her and says that she’s making Adora sick. He says that Camille is “tormenting her. By constantly bringing up Marian” (164). However, Camille tells Alan that she never brought up Marian and that her mother is lying. Camille goes to her room and drinks bourbon, thinking about Marian. She walks down the hall to her old room and realizes that her mother left all the medical equipment exactly as it was before Marian’s death.

Camille calls Curry to update him on everything she has gathered so far about the murders, and she tells him that whenever she’s back at home she feels like a bad person. He tries to cheer her up by telling her a story, and it’s clear that they have a father-daughter kind of relationship.