46 pages • 1-hour read
Sharp Objects
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The narrator, Camille, a crime reporter for Chicago’s Daily Post, is working on a story when her editor, Frank Curry, calls her to his office. He asks her questions about her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, and reveals that a little girl, ten-year-old Natalie Keene, is currently missing. Considering that another Wind Gap girl, nine-year-old Ann Nash, had been murdered the previous year, Curry suspects a serial killer is to blame. As a result, he asks Camille to visit her hometown and cover the story. Camille initially refuses, but she is eager to please Curry and ultimately accepts.
On her way to Wind Gap, Camille stays in a hotel and takes a bath, revealing that she only takes baths and not showers because she “can’t handle the spray, it gets my skin buzzing, like someone’s turned on a switch” (5). Once in Wind Gap, she goes straight to the police station and attempts to get information about missing Natalie from Chief Vickery, but he refuses to give her a comment about the case. However, he does reveal that Ann Nash’s body had been found in Falls Creek.
Camille goes to the woods on the edge of town to join the search party for Natalie, hoping to gain information for her upcoming article. Before entering the woods, she sees four pretty preteen blondes, one of which is her half-sister, Amma, although she doesn’t know it’s Amma initially because Camille hasn’t seen her in a long time. Once in the woods, Camille meets a man who reveals that Ann Nash’s teeth had been removed after her murder.
The chapter ends with Camille thinking back to a memory of her at twelve years old, when she snuck into a neighbor boy’s hunting shed. Skinned animals were dangling from the ceiling, and the walls were littered with pornographic images, including a woman who was “tied up, her eyes glazed, breasts stretched and veined like grapes, as a man took her from behind” (15). She recounts how she could “smell them all in the thick, gory air,” and how she went home that night and “masturbated for the first time, panting and sick” (15).
Chapter 2 Summary
The chapter opens with Camille drinking at a dive bar before visiting Betsy and Robert Nash, Ann Nash’s parents. Once at the Nash residence, Camille describes their house as “a late 70s piece of generica like all the houses on the west side of town” (18). She is greeted by Robert, who agrees to talk with her. He reveals that Ann had disappeared while riding her bike in the neighborhood, that she hadn’t been sexually abused or tortured, and that she had died by strangulation.
Next, Camille goes to her mother’s house, the place she intends to stay during her time in Wind Gap. Her mother’s house, an old Victorian mansion, sits at the top of a steep hill in Wind Gap’s wealthy section of town. Camille’s mother, Adora, is in her late forties and described as having “[g]lowing pale skin, with long blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She was like a girl’s very best doll” (24). Camille sits on the back porch with Adora and her husband, Alan, and they all drink amaretto sours.
The next morning, Camille wakes up early and heads downtown to wait for the police station to open, hoping to get a quote from Vickery. However, as she is walking down Main Street, she sees an older woman sitting strangely in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the side of a building and “shaking her head manically, like a child refusing to feed” (28). Camille walks over and sees Natalie Keene’s dead body squished between two buildings, her “lips caved in around her gums” (28). Vickery shows up with an out-of-town detective from Kansas City.
Chapter 3 Summary
It’s been five days since Camille’s return to Wind Gap, and she still hasn’t seen Amma. Getting ready for the funeral, Camille notes that Adora wears blue to the funeral instead of black, and she remembers that Adora also wore blue to her little sister Marian’s funeral. Despite not having permission to attend Natalie’s funeral, Camille decides to attend because Curry wants her to get coverage. The funeral takes place at a church, and she observes that there are no children in attendance, as if it’s due to an“instinct to prevent one’s children from being picked as future prey” (31).
After watching Natalie be buried in the family plot, she notes that, contrary to the adage that “no parents should see their children die,” it’s actually “the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances” (34). However, the Keenes will “remain the purest form of family. Underground” (34).
After the funeral, everyone goes to the Keenes’ house. Camille walks around the house, spying for her article, although she admits she is being rotten. She sees Katie Lacey, her best friend from high school, and she realizes that “being an insider here was more distracting than useful,” as she is suddenly swarmed by old acquaintances and pulled back into the drama and gossip of her high school days (36). She also runs into Jackie O’Neele, her mother’s former best friend. Camille ends up leaving with no quotes because she’s tired of socializing.
She later calls the Keenes to get a quote for her article, but Natalie Keene’s mother says they just want to be left alone. Camille still manages to piece together an article briefly detailing the funeral, and Curry approves. However, he wants Camille to write a larger feature on the families.
The next morning, Camille awakes and starts drinking vodka from a flask. She reveals that she had previously been sober for six months, but that being back in Wind Gap has got her drinking again. She has a brief but strained conversation with her mother, and then leaves the house. On her way out, she finally runs into Amma, who is playing with a dollhouse replica of Adora’s mansion. Camille realizes that Amma is the same girl she saw at the edge of the woods, and that she looks much younger now.
Camille runs into Vickery downtown, and he reveals that Ann had “killed a neighbor’s pet bird with a stick. She’d sharpened it herself with one of her daddy’s hunting knifes” (45). Similarly, before moving to Wind Gap, Natalie had stabbed a classmate in the eye with a pair of scissors.
The detective from Kansas City drives by and tries to introduce himself to Camille, but she doesn’t say anything.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Chapters One through Three of Sharp Objects establishes the first-person point of view as vital to the story. Told from Camille’s perspective, the language and syntax are reflections of Camille’s character—both her journalistic background and her dark outlook on life. For example, Chapter One opens with Camille’s observations of her boss: “A belly. A smell. Cigarettes and old coffee. My editor, esteemed, weary, Frank Curry, rocking back in his cracked Hush Puppies. His teeth soaked in a brown tobacco saliva” (1). While the focus on these minute details demonstratesCamille’s acute assessment of her surroundings in a journalistic way, they also reflect Camille’s personal focus. By noticing the offensive smells, broken shoes, and dirty teeth, it reveals Camille’s grim perspective on life—a fact that will be further revealed in subsequent chapters.
Chapter Two opens with Camille drinking alcohol at a bar. Alcohol plays an important role for Camille throughout the novel. Here, she’s drinking to loosen up before talking to Ann Nash’s father, but later in Chapter Two she drinks with her mother and stepfather to artificially bond. While Chapter Three focuses mostly on Natalie Keene’s funeral, the morning after the service Camille wakes up and drinks vodka from a flask. Camille reveals that she has previously been sober for six months, but that the alcohol gave her “that first necessary layer to deal with this particular place on this particular day” (41). She makes the connection between her drinking and the fact that she hates Wind Gap and that both the alcohol and her hometownare unhealthy for her. In this way, the physical act of drinking, which only becomes more severe as the novel progresses, serves as a marker of Camille’s mental state while in Wind Gap.
Chapter Three also introduces the character of Amma, Camille’s half-sister. Amma is described as looking like a voluptuous teenager outside the home, but once Camille sees her at Adora’s she notes that she looks like a child. Camille also notices that Amma’s actions further this observation—near the woods she acted catty and grown, but at home she’s playing with a dollhouse. This discrepancy between Amma’s opposing personas is the first foreshadowing that something about Amma is strange. This strangeness of character is furthered by the fact that, while playing with her dollhouse, Amma insists that every item in the dollhouse be a perfect replica of Adora’s mansion. While this might initially seem like Amma is simply spoiled, the depth of her unusual behavior is uncovered in subsequent chapters.
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