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jodar's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is the first novel by Patricia Highsmith that I have read and I expect it won’t be the last. The understated style of writing meant the grip this poignant story had on me built slowly but steadily, a story of a dysfunctional family and most especially of a woman’s loneliness, longing, obsessions and her futile desire for meaning in a world that often seems indifferent.
The story unfolds largely through the innermost thoughts of the MC, Edith, a seemingly ordinary woman living in small-town 1950s–1970s United States. She seeks meaning through her political writing and later through creative writing and sculpture.
The story unfolds largely through the innermost thoughts of the MC, Edith, a seemingly ordinary woman living in small-town 1950s–1970s United States. She seeks meaning through her political writing and later through creative writing and sculpture.
Edith had constantly to bolster herself by remembering that she didn’t believe life had any purpose, anyway. To be happy, one had to work at whatever one had to work at, and without asking why, and without looking back for results. (Chapter 3)
What starts as a fairly mundane account of the MC’s daily life gradually transforms into a harrowing tale of family betrayals, the drudgery of unfairly imposed caregiving and an emotional sense of failure against her own and society’s expectations. The MC increasingly succumbs to a wish-fulfilling fantasy world at odds with her unpleasant reality.
The MC’s character is drawn with understanding and sympathy. I may have felt frustrated at times with the MC’s inability to assert herself with her husband and son, yet Highsmith helps us to empathise and understand the MC’s desires and fears. The MC does try to keep herself on an even keel:
So the sculpting, amateurish, blundering though she might be as yet, took her away from the dreariness. It was a second crutch, maybe, her diary being the first. One had to live somehow. (Chapter 21)
As the psychological tension builds, the feeling builds too that the novel isn’t going to end well, and that is true. But as I closed the book and think about it again now, I feel that along with the emotionally painful plot, there is more here to consider: the symbolism, perhaps, of past and unfulfilled future filled with both joy and pain; the fragility of personal relationships; and over it all, the meaning of life, if any, whether as an individual, with friends and family or at broad worldwide level.
A sad, unsettling, but wonderful novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Mental illness, Infidelity, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Violence and Murder
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