A review by anna_tokareva
Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith
4.0
I can't quite remember the last time I finished a book in two days. However, I found my weekend sucked up by this quietly terrifying novel. This is the first book by Patricia Highsmith that I have read, it was perched on the featured shelf at a library I happened to pop in to. The perky librarian raved on about it as she scanned the bar code, but this is not quite the energetic response I would give to this book. This is not a book that leaves one exited, exactly.
Edith's Diary is a work of great skill and restraint. Highsmith's understated style conceals the author's presence, leaving a transparent barrier between the reader and the characters. They are not particularly likable, but its hard not to care about these people as you witness their sad pedestrian lives slowly degenerate.
The impact of this work lies in its insidious invasion of the reader's psyche. Half-way through the novel, I was questioning myself and my own beliefs, assumptions, delusions. How would I know if I was going mad? Imagining things? Highsmith unravels Edith's ‘cracking up’, as her lout of a son Cliffie puts it, in such a subtle way that it almost feels like we are taking the mental journey with her. Hints, gentle foreshadowing, the building of tension, are all artfully handled and used to full effect.
Afterwards, the book is shut. Finished. Still, I felt a little off-kilter for quite a while. The cliche of ‘haunting’ seems invented specifically to describe this book. The story gets under the skin in ways you wouldn't wish on a friend and, like another reviewer had noted, I wouldn't recommend reading it in the midst of a self-doubting episode, that's for sure.
Edith's Diary is a work of great skill and restraint. Highsmith's understated style conceals the author's presence, leaving a transparent barrier between the reader and the characters. They are not particularly likable, but its hard not to care about these people as you witness their sad pedestrian lives slowly degenerate.
The impact of this work lies in its insidious invasion of the reader's psyche. Half-way through the novel, I was questioning myself and my own beliefs, assumptions, delusions. How would I know if I was going mad? Imagining things? Highsmith unravels Edith's ‘cracking up’, as her lout of a son Cliffie puts it, in such a subtle way that it almost feels like we are taking the mental journey with her. Hints, gentle foreshadowing, the building of tension, are all artfully handled and used to full effect.
Afterwards, the book is shut. Finished. Still, I felt a little off-kilter for quite a while. The cliche of ‘haunting’ seems invented specifically to describe this book. The story gets under the skin in ways you wouldn't wish on a friend and, like another reviewer had noted, I wouldn't recommend reading it in the midst of a self-doubting episode, that's for sure.