Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Deep Water is my first Highsmith read, and I’m pleased to report I really enjoyed it. Though not an excessive amount of action happens until the end of the novel Highsmith’s writing is excellent, buoying you along and building tension in tiny increments until we finally reach a crescendo of madness, wondering how exactly we ended up there.
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
Vic Van Allen is married to Melinda, whose unscrupulous affairs are well known to Vic and his friends — indeed they are often paraded in front of them. Though Vic shows some level of tolerance in order to maintain his loveless marriage, his patience is wearing thin. One of Melinda’s former lovers has turned up dead, and in order to scare away Melinda’s newest suitor Vic tells him a tall tale implicating himself in that very murder. But when an opportunity arises to be rid of Melinda’s latest squeeze Vic’s fiction soon becomes reality.
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
After reading this book I read a review which said that Highsmith has an uncanny ability to have her reader empathise with psychopaths, which is something I hadn’t considered throughout. I’d felt sorry for Vic, admired his patience, felt frustrated by his passiveness, and literally willed him to get away with murder! And only upon reading that review did I realise how I’d been played. Highsmith’s skill in slowly building up a picture of everyday tedium and domesticity somehow normalises the lengths Vic goes to in order to maintain control, eventually leading to murder. He’s not a bad guy, really!
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
After I’d finished Deep Water I did a little internet digging and inevitably fell down the Patricia Highsmith rabbit hole. It seems she was quite a character. Like Vic Van Allen, Highsmith had a hobby of breeding snails. There’s a story that she once arrived to a dinner party with a head of lettuce and 100 snails in her handbag, saying that they were her companions for the evening.
Instagram - @podsticles
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
Vic Van Allen is married to Melinda, whose unscrupulous affairs are well known to Vic and his friends — indeed they are often paraded in front of them. Though Vic shows some level of tolerance in order to maintain his loveless marriage, his patience is wearing thin. One of Melinda’s former lovers has turned up dead, and in order to scare away Melinda’s newest suitor Vic tells him a tall tale implicating himself in that very murder. But when an opportunity arises to be rid of Melinda’s latest squeeze Vic’s fiction soon becomes reality.
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
After reading this book I read a review which said that Highsmith has an uncanny ability to have her reader empathise with psychopaths, which is something I hadn’t considered throughout. I’d felt sorry for Vic, admired his patience, felt frustrated by his passiveness, and literally willed him to get away with murder! And only upon reading that review did I realise how I’d been played. Highsmith’s skill in slowly building up a picture of everyday tedium and domesticity somehow normalises the lengths Vic goes to in order to maintain control, eventually leading to murder. He’s not a bad guy, really!
~~~~.~~~~.~~~~
After I’d finished Deep Water I did a little internet digging and inevitably fell down the Patricia Highsmith rabbit hole. It seems she was quite a character. Like Vic Van Allen, Highsmith had a hobby of breeding snails. There’s a story that she once arrived to a dinner party with a head of lettuce and 100 snails in her handbag, saying that they were her companions for the evening.
Instagram - @podsticles
4,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2017/02/28/shut-the-noise-out-with-your-own-noise/
dark
tense
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars. After watching Carol, a film in which not a lot is said, but a whole lot is felt, I wanted to delve into a Patricia Highsmith novel to actually experience all those emotional undercurrents that are only hinted at onscreen. Deep Water - Crime and Punishment in a Mad Men setting - delivers on that front. I'd love to watch Tom Hiddlestone play Victor Van Allen as his psyche circles the drain. I can already see the flashes of mistrust, jealousy, confusion and paranoia play out on his features. You'd totally believe he's the kind of guy who'd breed snails and kill his wife's lovers, right? And Melinda? That's Margot Robbie. No doubt. Bewitching, sexy, life-of-the-party, horrible. God, this was a marriage doomed from the start. But even knowing that you can't help but read on, fascinated, to see how it all ends.
4,5 stars. My review: https://theblankgarden.com/2017/02/28/shut-the-noise-out-with-your-own-noise/
A strange and unsettling book, filled with a looming sense of menace. The first half of the book could be contemporary literary fiction about a husband who is tolerant of his wife's affairs and his difficulties in navigating social life in a small town. But there is something dark that throws a shadow over even the most banal of scenes, a hint at what is to come.