Sharp Objects

I just finished this book and found it particularly compelling in many different ways. This book was about a young reporter that returns back to her home town after a number of years to write a report on two little girls’ murders. In this book the main character Camille is a heavy drinker and does many irresponsible things both now, and has in the past. The reason why I think she commits so many reckless actions is to make up for the dark secret she was living, and the people around her. I think for her drinking she is trying to drown out the voices that keep telling her to leave to run; she doesn’t want to believe what she is actually thinking, so she distracts her brain with alcohol. I believe when she is drinking she finds herself able to slip away from reality, and the further she slips away, the less she has to wake up and face her current situation. As for her reckless actions presently, I believe she does them to compensate for her mother, so that her mother doesn’t look so bad, so that everyone is looking at her the "screwed up little child", instead of having eyes on her mom. I think that even though Camille in the beginning of the book refuses to admit it, she has known all along what her mother has been doing and has been desperately trying to hide it. In one of her mother’s journal entries, there is a passage about when Camille was younger she pulled away from her mother Marian; she hated Marian, and refused the special attention and care her mother tried to show her. To me the mother is wrong and is just not able to see the way her daughter was really trying to show her love. By committing so many horrible things, and doing such dangerous things at such a young age, she calling out to her mother, trying to grab her mother’s attention. She wanted her mother to tell her stop, to beg her to be good to give her the time of day in a normal motherly way. Camille looked for affection in others and other things, because she felt so deprived of it at home.
I am glad that Camille has finally opened her eyes and taken a good look around her, I just wish that she had grown up sooner. Before she was too afraid to face her mother, to help her sister, to really solve the murders or at least lead the police in the right direction. She stayed for too long in the shadows pretending that light and sunshine could still reach her even when she was so consumed within the darkness. if only she had come back to her hometown and remembered how horrible things were, had processed how horrible things still were; if she had just stopped drowning herself in alcohol and irresponsible "fun", and reckless actions, and stopped trying to distract herself with other people around her then maybe she would have been able to take control of thing before they spun so completely out of control. This reflects on the world, because to many people try to avoid trouble; they try to turn their heads and pretend they can’t see what is really going on. People would rather close their eyes then reach out a helping hand. It sort of reminds me of the book the "Terrible Things", how all the animals tried to make everything still seem okay and ignored how all their friends were being taken away. It also reminds me of a line from the song, Blowing in the Wind by Bob Dylan: "How many ears must one man have, before he can hear the people cry."