I'm not sure what to make of this book. It was devastating to the point of being sickening, but I still managed to read it within three days so I guess I did enjoy it to some degree. I never want to read it again though and I'm wary of recommending it to others. The novel is centered around the character Jude St. Francis, a broken individual who is intent upon self-destruction as a result of decades of emotional and physical abuse. The novel does occasionally weave in and out of the other protagonists' stories and this technique allows for us to not only learn about the tragic events which occur to Jude (they are truly harrowing and quite honestly, horrific) but also how his conflicted self is interpreted by his friends. While I can appreciate the narrative's focus on the relationships between the four friends as a way to break up its darkly graphic nature, I still found myself tiring of Jude's continual self-deprecation and complete misery. By the end of the nov
This summer I couldn't wait to start reading. I had spent hours in the library pouring over Shakespeare, Greek Literature and existentialism and was ready to be lost in enjoyable holiday reads where no real analysis was required. I had just finished my uni exams and was left yearning to read fiction without the need to analyse sentence structure, words cloaked with hidden meanings and the positioning of punctuation. My first novel of the summer was Sharp Objects by same the author who penned Gone Girl ; a mystery novel which kept its readers guessing right until the very end. This novel has a very satisfying yet creepily eery ending and will leave you feeling alarmed and unsettled by the effects of familial oppressiveness. At times the novel led its reader down a disturbing path of suffocating maternal love and a feeling of utter despair only to be joined by dry humour and dark wit. The protagonist, Camille Parker, is a reporter who is sent back home by her boss to report on t