46 pages • 1-hour read
Sharp Objects
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Camille is walking around Jacob J. Garrett Memorial Park, the last place Natalie Keene was seen alive. Camille recalls that when she was in high school it was “the place everyone met on the weekends to drink beer or smoke pot or get jerked off three feet into the woods” (47). Here she meets a little boy who tells her that his friend, James Capisi, saw a woman take Natalie into the woods.
Camille looks up Capisi in the thin Wind Gap phone book and drives to the Capisi house in the middle of the low-rent section of town. While observing the poverty around her, Camille notes that most of the people “work at the nearby pig factory-farm, a private operation that delivers almost 2 percent of the country’s pork” (49). She also admits that her mother owns the farm, and despite letting other people run it, Adora makes $1.2 million annually.
Once at the Capisi house, Camille talks to James through an open window. James’s mother is sick with cancer, and is nowhere to be found. James tells Camille that he saw an old, pale woman with white hair take Natalie into the woods. He says that the old woman smiled at him and then put her finger to her lips, gesturing at him to be quiet.
Camille leaves and goes to a bar. While drinking a bourbon she runs into Richard Willis, the detective from Kansas City. The two exchange sarcastic banter. Camille attempts to get information unsuccessfully and Richard triesto get personal with her. There is an unspoken attraction between them as they drink.
When Camille gets home, Amma is sick and resting her head in Adora’s lap. Alan says that Amma just has the summer chills. This scene makes Camille flashback to when her little sister Marian was sick, and how doting her mother used to be with them. She remembers her mother “trying to prod me with ointments and oils, homemade remedies and homeopathic nonsense. I sometimes took the foul solutions, more often refused” (59).
Amma, previously calm, suddenly lashes out in a fit of rage because the legs of her dollhouse table don’t perfectly match Adora’s real-life table. She screams and smashes the table on the floor. Camille goes to her room. Once inside, she reveals that she is a cutter, “Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It’s covered with words—cook, cupcake, kitty, curls—as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh” (60). She first started cutting at age thirteen, right after Marian died. She also admits that at thirteen she became beautiful and obsessed with herself, and that she drinks so that she “doesn’t think too much about what I’ve done to my body and so I don’t do any more” (62). At the age of thirty, just six months ago, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital to stop herself from cutting.
Chapter 5 Summary
Camille wakes up and eats breakfast with Alan and her mother. They both apologize for Amma’s strange behavior last night. They attempt to make small talk, and then Amma sits down across from Camille at the kitchen table. Amma smiles at her parents but secretly kicks Camille under the table. Amma then says that Camille is like Cinderella and Amma is like the evil stepsister. Amma goes on to say that she wishes she could get murdered because then life would be perfect.
Camille’s mother reveals that she was close to the murdered girls, but won’t tell Camille exactly how. Camille is annoyed by her mother’s ability to make everything about herself, saying that “Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother, and this more than anything about her turns my stomach” (69). This makes Camille remember that right after Marian’s death, her mother locked herself in her ivory-floored, decadent bedroom for an entire year and wouldn’t let Camille in.
Camille finds Richard at Broussards’ diner. She agrees to give Richard the scoop on Wind Gap’s criminal past, and in exchange he agrees to give her a comment she can use in an upcoming article. Thinking about Wind Gap’s past makes Camille remember her childhood. She notes that her mother got pregnant at seventeen by “Some boy from Kentucky who she met at church camp for a Christmas visit and left me in her belly” (75). Shortly after Adora had Camille, Adora’s parents died, leaving her all alone. After this, Alan, the son of some friends of the family, swooped in and married Adora. Camille remembers that although she was supposed to view Alan as her father, they had no relationship whatsoever. While Camille was a toddler, Adora gave birth to Marian. Camille mentions that Marian was always a sickly child but was never diagnosed with any illnesses.
Driving along Main Street, Camille sees Amma and her friends stealing objects from a makeshift shrine for Natalie. Later that night, Camille calls Curry to update him on the progress of the article she’s writing. He tells her to write a human-interest piece on the girls.
Chapter 6 Summary
Camille is at La Mere, Wind Gap’s only upscale eatery. She intends to drink, but instead she runs into Annabelle Gasser, Adora’s best friend. Annabelle pulls Camille over to her table where Jackie and two other blonde blondes sit drinking. Camille decides to drink with them because “A quartet of drunk, bored, and bitchy housewives who knew all the gossip of Wind Gap” could be useful for her upcoming story (84). The women share gossip with Camille, and Jackie tells her that the “Right now, way things are with your mother, you’re better in Chicago” (87).
Camille goes back to the Nash’s house, hoping to get more details about Ann for the character piece she’s writing. Bob Nash isn’t able to tell Camille much before Adora shows up. Adora says that she’s here on a social visit and tells Camille to leave because “it’s difficult for me to relax around you these days” (94). Adora also makes it clear that she is upset that Camille is prying into the Nash’s lives, hoping to get a story. Camille leaves and starts crying, clearly hurt by her mother’s intrusion.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Chapters Four through Six begin to uncover some of Wind Gap’s darkest secrets, while also further emphasizing the economic divide between the citizens of Wind Gap. In particular, Chapter Four reveals that Natalie’s killer may have been a woman. However, because the little boy who made this claim is from the poor side of town and has a dying mother, his statement isn’t taken seriously by police. Perhaps even more alarmingly than the potential revelation of a key suspect in the murder case is Amma’s strange behavior. While previous chapters have effectively demonstrated Amma’s dichotomous personality—(largely) happy little girl at home and wild while out with her friends, Amma’s tantrum over her imperfect dollhouse table reveals an angry side to her that was previously unseen.
This chapter also emphasizes how Adora attempted to pamper Camille when she was sick; this, combined with her coddling Amma, reveals a matriarchal side to Adora than has previously not been seen. However, the most shocking secret of all is the revelation of Camille’s self-harming past; a fact made all the more surprising because Camille, although having only been released from the psychiatric hospital six months ago, hasn’t hinted at her condition in previous chapters. Important to note here is that witnessing Adora caring for Amma, which reminds Camille of Marian’s constant sickness, is what prompts Camille to reveal her secret.
Chapter Five also reveals more of Amma’s spontaneously violent and wild behavior—not only does she kick Camille under the kitchen table, but she also steals objects from Natalie’s memorial. This, as well as the revelation that Adora was close to Natalie before her death, serves as a foreshadowing of darker secrets to be revealed in subsequent chapters. There is also the budding relationship between Camille and Richard. Richard is an outsider to Wind Gap, which attracts Camille because she feels like an outsider, too. This feeling of being an outsider in her hometown will grow stronger throughout the coming chapters, but it’s important to note Camille’s personal decline since coming back to Wind Gap. Not only is she drinking more, but she is also thinking more about self-harm. In Chicago, away from her mother and past, she feels largely responsible and able,but being back in Wind Gap, surrounded by old acquaintances and unpleasant memories, she feels like she’s once again her teenaged self, something that will become more pronounced as the novel progresses.
Chapter Six, although brief, emphasizes the economic division in Wind Gap and its effects on the town’s citizens. Camille opens the chapter by saying that Wind Gap has only one upscale eatery, which is in the rich part of town, next to her mother’s house. This, combined with the fact that James Capisi, from Chapter Four, lives in the poor side of town next to the hog farm, implies that the rich and poor are physically segregated from each other. This chapter also emphasizes the cattiness and gossiping that goes on between the women within the rich circles, something that Camille admits to being part of while a teenager but now finds repulsing.
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