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linda_edwards's review against another edition
4.0
A sad story yet so compelling. Another great book from Highsmith.
samizimecki's review against another edition
2.0
I so desperately wanted to like this book since it was specifically recommended to me but I unfortunately didn't.
For one, none of the characters are likable. Edith is very vocal about politics and on paper, but passive in person. Her husband Brett leaves her for a younger woman but keeps trying to have a sort of friendship with Edith, which she allows even though she's actually really angry with him. They have a son, Cliffie, who is a trouble maker from the beginning, even before both parents give up on him. Brett's sick uncle, George, is just annoying and a burden. The other supporting characters were forgettable.
Since the book is titled "Edith's Diary," you'd expect it to have a bigger role. Yes, she does use it to create a sort of fantasy life for the son that didn't amount to anything, but at the same time, she is still able to differentiate between the real world and her fantasy. I feel like her descent into "madness" or her mental instability towards the end of the book is rushed and not properly developed (she becomes a bit more forgetful, but she's also supposed to be 50+ and she's still super high functioning), as if Highsmith was essentially like, "This book is going nowhere, might as well end it!"
It didn't help that this book moved insanely slow. It's not a mystery and it's not really a thriller, it's more of a suspenseful book, but one that you get anxious reading, expecting things to happen and then being disappointed and slightly angry with the lack of climax. I'm one of the few people apparently that didn't like this book, and though I thought it was slow paced, it did manage to hold my interest fairly well. It has potential even with the pacing and the unlikable characters, but the ending builds up to nothing and that is the most frustrating thing about this book for me.
For one, none of the characters are likable. Edith is very vocal about politics and on paper, but passive in person. Her husband Brett leaves her for a younger woman but keeps trying to have a sort of friendship with Edith, which she allows even though she's actually really angry with him. They have a son, Cliffie, who is a trouble maker from the beginning, even before both parents give up on him. Brett's sick uncle, George, is just annoying and a burden. The other supporting characters were forgettable.
Since the book is titled "Edith's Diary," you'd expect it to have a bigger role. Yes, she does use it to create a sort of fantasy life for the son that didn't amount to anything, but at the same time, she is still able to differentiate between the real world and her fantasy. I feel like her descent into "madness" or her mental instability towards the end of the book is rushed and not properly developed (she becomes a bit more forgetful, but she's also supposed to be 50+ and she's still super high functioning), as if Highsmith was essentially like, "This book is going nowhere, might as well end it!"
It didn't help that this book moved insanely slow. It's not a mystery and it's not really a thriller, it's more of a suspenseful book, but one that you get anxious reading, expecting things to happen and then being disappointed and slightly angry with the lack of climax. I'm one of the few people apparently that didn't like this book, and though I thought it was slow paced, it did manage to hold my interest fairly well. It has potential even with the pacing and the unlikable characters, but the ending builds up to nothing and that is the most frustrating thing about this book for me.
heathssm's review
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
komet2020's review against another edition
4.0
"Edith's Diary" is a psychological thriller that has as its focus what, at face value, is a typical, middle class family in mid-1950s America. It begins with Edith Howland, her husband Brett, their 10 year old son Clifford (aka "Cliffie"), and the family pet poised to move from their Manhattan apartment to their new house in Pennsylvania, a stone's throw from Philadelphia. Edith has high hopes that the move to a home of their own will usher in a new life rich in opportunity for herself and family. She takes with her a diary into which she has channeled her inmost thoughts and worldly observations. It is her most cherished possession.
Once the Howlands are settled into their new home and the 1950s recede into the 1960s, Edith strives to eke out a living with her husband on a paper to which both contribute articles and essays. One of Brett's relatives, George, a man of advancing years, comes to live with the Howlands. Over time, George's growing needs, coupled with the struggles Brett and Edith have in raising their son, give rise to a rift in Brett and Edith's marriage. Rather than growing together, Brett and Edith gradually grow apart, divorce, and Brett abandons the family for a new life - and love - in New York.
The rest of the novel shows, ever so subtly and cleverly, how over a decade, Edith retreats almost imperceptibly from reality, and manages to create in her diary, a reality conforming to what she desires out of life. I'm normally not a great reader of psychological thrillers. But I have known --- since the late 1990s --- of Patricia Highsmith's touted reputation as a writer of psychological suspense. And that is what prompted me, at long last, to take up one of her novels. I very much enjoyed the journey it put me on, and the surprising resolution to that decades long journey.
I recommend "Edith's Diary" to anyone who loves to read a well-crafted, slow boiling pressure cooker of a psychological thriller.
Once the Howlands are settled into their new home and the 1950s recede into the 1960s, Edith strives to eke out a living with her husband on a paper to which both contribute articles and essays. One of Brett's relatives, George, a man of advancing years, comes to live with the Howlands. Over time, George's growing needs, coupled with the struggles Brett and Edith have in raising their son, give rise to a rift in Brett and Edith's marriage. Rather than growing together, Brett and Edith gradually grow apart, divorce, and Brett abandons the family for a new life - and love - in New York.
The rest of the novel shows, ever so subtly and cleverly, how over a decade, Edith retreats almost imperceptibly from reality, and manages to create in her diary, a reality conforming to what she desires out of life. I'm normally not a great reader of psychological thrillers. But I have known --- since the late 1990s --- of Patricia Highsmith's touted reputation as a writer of psychological suspense. And that is what prompted me, at long last, to take up one of her novels. I very much enjoyed the journey it put me on, and the surprising resolution to that decades long journey.
I recommend "Edith's Diary" to anyone who loves to read a well-crafted, slow boiling pressure cooker of a psychological thriller.
balancinghistorybooks's review
4.0
I read and enjoyed a couple of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley books quite some years ago, and it has taken me until almost a decade later to seek out more of her rather large oeuvre. Edith's Diary, a psychological crime story, was the first full-length novel not featuring Mr Ripley which I chose to read. The Virago edition, which was republished along with several other Highsmith titles, has an introduction by crime writer Denise Mina, which I found to be measured and quite insightful.
Since its publication in 1977, the novel has been highly praised. The Times calls Edith's Diary 'masterly... haunting... a book that lingers in the memory and constantly disturbs and delights.' The New Yorker believes it to be 'a work of extraordinary force and feeling... her strongest, her most imaginative and by far her most substantial novel.' Writer A.N. Wilson says: 'Edith's Diary is certainly one of the saddest novels I ever read, but it is also one of the mere twenty or so that I would say were perfect, unimprovable masterpieces.'
In her introduction, Mina notes: 'Regardless of genre or form, it is touching on truth that gives writing well weight and profundity. Patricia Highsmith is a great writer. Her truths are not always comfortable. They're not easy to own, but we know them when we read them. We might flinch at what she points out, but we can't dent it. Truth not only makes fiction more believable, it is what makes reading potentially life-changing.'
At the beginning of the novel, protagonist Edith Howland is moving from her New York apartment to a house in the suburbs in Brunswick, Pennsylvania, with her husband Brett and ten-year-old son Cliffie. Highsmith is perceptive of the effect which this upheaval has on their psychopathic son: 'The move was real, not something he had imagined... Cliffie often imagined much more violent things, like a bomb going off under their apartment building, even under all of New York, the whole city going up sky-high with no survivors. But suddenly this, their moving to another state, was somehow like a real bomb going off under his own feet.' As soon as they have moved, Cliffie tries to smother the family's cat beneath the bedspread, the first incident of many in which the reader recoils from him. Edith is very well informed politically, and has such an awareness of what is going on in the world around her, but her son's behaviour, and his unwillingness to do anything, leaves her baffled.
The novel begins in 1955, and spans many years. A couple of months after the family has settled into their new house, Brett's uncle, a rather cantankerous old man named George, comes to stay with them. It is around this time that Edith recognises she feels upset for 'a few hours at a time', with no real reason as to why. She begins to record untruths in her diary, which is almost like a character in its own right in the novel. After Cliffie is thrown out of his college entrance exams for trying to cheat, for example, Edith records that night that 'he thinks he did pretty well... If he gets an 80 average, he'll go to - maybe Princeton.' Immediately following this, she acknowledges her fictional entry to herself: 'The entry was a lie. But after all who was going to see it? And she felt better, having written it, felt less melancholic, almost cheerful, in fact.' Edith does not keep her diary regularly, and has written in it sporadically since she was a very young woman. She tends to note only when a moment of crisis has occurred, or something which she wishes to remember. The untruths become more frequent; worried by her son's path in life, she invents a fiancee, and then a daughter, for him in her diary.
Time moves quickly in this novel, and often, several years have passed from one chapter to the next. Edith's home life begins to crumble, and many problems beset her. Edith's Diary is a great example of domestic noir. The third person perspective which has been used throughout focuses primarily upon Edith, but also explores the private lives of her husband and son. Edith's Diary is not quite what I was expecting; I thought that the entirety would be told using diary extracts, but actually, relatively little is expressed in Edith's own words.
The prose in the novel does tend to be a little matter-of-fact, and there is very little writing here which could be termed as beautiful. That is, however, precisely the point. The building of tension is apparent from almost the very beginning, and is well handled. Edith's Diary was not as chilling as I was expecting it to be, but I found the character development believable. The novel has definitely left me eager to read more of Highsmith's work.
Since its publication in 1977, the novel has been highly praised. The Times calls Edith's Diary 'masterly... haunting... a book that lingers in the memory and constantly disturbs and delights.' The New Yorker believes it to be 'a work of extraordinary force and feeling... her strongest, her most imaginative and by far her most substantial novel.' Writer A.N. Wilson says: 'Edith's Diary is certainly one of the saddest novels I ever read, but it is also one of the mere twenty or so that I would say were perfect, unimprovable masterpieces.'
In her introduction, Mina notes: 'Regardless of genre or form, it is touching on truth that gives writing well weight and profundity. Patricia Highsmith is a great writer. Her truths are not always comfortable. They're not easy to own, but we know them when we read them. We might flinch at what she points out, but we can't dent it. Truth not only makes fiction more believable, it is what makes reading potentially life-changing.'
At the beginning of the novel, protagonist Edith Howland is moving from her New York apartment to a house in the suburbs in Brunswick, Pennsylvania, with her husband Brett and ten-year-old son Cliffie. Highsmith is perceptive of the effect which this upheaval has on their psychopathic son: 'The move was real, not something he had imagined... Cliffie often imagined much more violent things, like a bomb going off under their apartment building, even under all of New York, the whole city going up sky-high with no survivors. But suddenly this, their moving to another state, was somehow like a real bomb going off under his own feet.' As soon as they have moved, Cliffie tries to smother the family's cat beneath the bedspread, the first incident of many in which the reader recoils from him. Edith is very well informed politically, and has such an awareness of what is going on in the world around her, but her son's behaviour, and his unwillingness to do anything, leaves her baffled.
The novel begins in 1955, and spans many years. A couple of months after the family has settled into their new house, Brett's uncle, a rather cantankerous old man named George, comes to stay with them. It is around this time that Edith recognises she feels upset for 'a few hours at a time', with no real reason as to why. She begins to record untruths in her diary, which is almost like a character in its own right in the novel. After Cliffie is thrown out of his college entrance exams for trying to cheat, for example, Edith records that night that 'he thinks he did pretty well... If he gets an 80 average, he'll go to - maybe Princeton.' Immediately following this, she acknowledges her fictional entry to herself: 'The entry was a lie. But after all who was going to see it? And she felt better, having written it, felt less melancholic, almost cheerful, in fact.' Edith does not keep her diary regularly, and has written in it sporadically since she was a very young woman. She tends to note only when a moment of crisis has occurred, or something which she wishes to remember. The untruths become more frequent; worried by her son's path in life, she invents a fiancee, and then a daughter, for him in her diary.
Time moves quickly in this novel, and often, several years have passed from one chapter to the next. Edith's home life begins to crumble, and many problems beset her. Edith's Diary is a great example of domestic noir. The third person perspective which has been used throughout focuses primarily upon Edith, but also explores the private lives of her husband and son. Edith's Diary is not quite what I was expecting; I thought that the entirety would be told using diary extracts, but actually, relatively little is expressed in Edith's own words.
The prose in the novel does tend to be a little matter-of-fact, and there is very little writing here which could be termed as beautiful. That is, however, precisely the point. The building of tension is apparent from almost the very beginning, and is well handled. Edith's Diary was not as chilling as I was expecting it to be, but I found the character development believable. The novel has definitely left me eager to read more of Highsmith's work.
tippycanoegal's review
4.0
Another Highsmith psychological study of a slowly unraveling mind. Edith is a complex character and her curious disconnection from an increasingly stressful life makes for a tense and uncomfortable reading experience. The end was a bit abrupt for me, but the book as a whole was beautifully written, and, like all of the Patricia Highsmith's books that I have read, deeply troubling.
featherbooks's review
4.0
As Michael Dirda assured me in his reviews of [a:Patricia Highsmith|7622|Patricia Highsmith|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1217411179p2/7622.jpg] books, I really enjoyed [b:Edith's Diary|129497|Edith's Diary|Patricia Highsmith|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347813345s/129497.jpg|1002905] and whipped through it quickly. Like watching a train wreck, I could not keep from reading about Edith’s devastating emotional and mental decline. She seems to operate well creatively (writing and sculpting, cleaning and working) yet hits the truth with her comment early on after her worthless son, Cliffie, expresses an interest in Uncle George’s codeine cough medicine: “We’re all crackers,” Edith thought, “all insane…” She seems productive, preparing meals, going to work, writing articles for her local newspaper but her diary entries clue us in that all is not well. She imagines a perfect fantasy world in her diary early in the novel: “The entry was a lie. But after all who was going to see it? And she felt better, having written it, felt less melancholic, almost cheerful, in fact.” The calmness and matter-of-fact narration belies the increasing madness of her heroine. My sympathy for Edith started to grow at this point. She’s depressed and troubled but trying to keep a lid on it not unlike her driving: “She was tempted to put on speed, but prudently kept within the limit, a discipline she found easy.” She also “stifled her anger” on hearing of her ex-husband’s new baby and frequently smothers her rage at her philandering husband. A further key to her state is the frequent reference to her smiling, her laughter, giggles and hilarity when she might be expected to be angry. The abyss Edith feels early on grows and swallows her by novel’s end and Highsmith provides no respite for the reader. Does she believe in nature or nuture? Highsmith has said that it’s the former which produces the criminal mind and Edith (like Highsmith) has a cold, unsatisfactory relationship with her parents as the incorrigible Cliffie does with Edith.
I haven’t encountered this much drinking in a novel since [b:The Thin Man|80616|The Thin Man|Dashiell Hammett|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1321111302s/80616.jpg|1336952] Friends and neighbors drop by for drinks at every hour of the day. Visits dwindle as Edith’s mental state declines and soon it is mainly her psychotic son, Cliffie, joining her for cocktails and wine at dinner. The denouement is a surprise but fitting as the other options of psychoanalysis in that day (and the creepy doctors her ex-husband brings over) offer unlikely solutions for Edith and there is a nice wrap up in being brought down by her own idealized creation of her son.
From Dirda: "Like Oscar Wilde, Highsmith insisted (in [b:Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction|572046|Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction |Patricia Highsmith|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312016063s/572046.jpg|559075]1966) that art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.... I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature care if justice is ever done or not. The murder in the novel is left vague and the obvious evildoer goes unpunished."
I haven’t encountered this much drinking in a novel since [b:The Thin Man|80616|The Thin Man|Dashiell Hammett|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1321111302s/80616.jpg|1336952] Friends and neighbors drop by for drinks at every hour of the day. Visits dwindle as Edith’s mental state declines and soon it is mainly her psychotic son, Cliffie, joining her for cocktails and wine at dinner. The denouement is a surprise but fitting as the other options of psychoanalysis in that day (and the creepy doctors her ex-husband brings over) offer unlikely solutions for Edith and there is a nice wrap up in being brought down by her own idealized creation of her son.
From Dirda: "Like Oscar Wilde, Highsmith insisted (in [b:Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction|572046|Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction |Patricia Highsmith|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312016063s/572046.jpg|559075]1966) that art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.... I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature care if justice is ever done or not. The murder in the novel is left vague and the obvious evildoer goes unpunished."