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lydia

Lydia's Page

I like reading books about war dogs, shipwrecks, and lady aviators.

Currently reading

The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss
Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper
Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn

I read Gillian Flynn's novels in reverse order, and I'd rank them in the same way. Gone Girl, her most recent, is far and away my favorite. Dark Places was harder for me, but I found it captivating. Sharp Objects left me on the fence. I think Flynn has improved tremendously with each turn (though she's clearly a talent from the first) and that's delightful to watch. 

 

Sharp Objects felt slow. The audiobook was so slow that I ended up setting the playback speed to run faster than normal. The plot felt slow and plodding, but didn't seem to use that time to build out its world or characters. By the end, I didn't feel like I had a sense of the narrator-- a woman who's entire body is scarred with words she's cut into herself. The characters never seemed to come to life for me. Their anomalies, physical and psychological, felt like circus tricks that kept us at arm's length from getting to know them.

 

While this is definitely my least favorite of Flynn's three novels, it's interesting to see how this debut set her up to tackle similarly dark matter with more finesse in her later works.