Sharp Objects

Camille opens Chapter Seven by saying: “[m]y sense of weightlessness, I think, comes from the fact that I know so little about my past—or at least that’s what the shrinks at the clinic came up with. I’ve long since given up trying to discover anything about my dad; when I picture him, it’s as a generic ‘father’ image” (94). She then thinks about how the only things she knows about Alan and Adora came from other people, and not from her mother. She admits that her mother has never told her that she loved her, and that she thinks Adora hates children. Camille says, “There’s a jealousy, a resentfulness that I can feel even now, in my memory” (96). Camille recounts a memory of her mother that “catches in me like a nasty clump of blood” (97). Once, when Adora was watching a baby and she thought no one was looking, she bit the baby’s cheek, making it cry.

Camille goes to drink at a bar, saying that she has “always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication—a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head” (98). She leaves the bar and sees Amma, dressed like a sweet little girl, driving a golf cart.