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A review by lee_foust
The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith
3.0
What an odd novel in the Highsmith canon. Rather more subtle that I expected from Highsmith and the thriller genre in general. Although usually the psychological study of her protagonist is her stock and trade, it's the threat or the murder or whatever that usually pushes her protagonists to reveal their true nature and leads them either to destruction or redemption, or that hellish nether land that lies between the two.
Here instead the murder (if there is even a murder) is obviously permitted, and so morally ambiguous we--like the protagonist--are never really sure what we think about it and it all seems beside the point, the point being the portrait of an emotionally and sexually needy man between gigs as it were weighing his options. That's all. Also, there's an exotic location, Tunisia, but not much more to it than that. (Oh, and I should say it might be a nod to Camus's The Stranger, or even a send-up, pointing out that for all Camus's existential querying, he never bothers to think of the murder victim as a real person or that Meursault could be in any way guilty of killing an actual human being. We have a clearly misguided American patriot and Christian character here as a kind of foil to the North African ennui/European existential blase-ity. He was at times a Samaritan and then at times seemed to be veering toward the villain of the piece--but no crime, no villain, no real drama here, just a portrait.)
Also it's Highsmith's usually fine prose, with the exception of the opening chapter: one of the worst I've ever read! Just a big info dump as the kids say, a bland and seemingly hurried exposition bringing us up to speed with no art to it at all. I was embarrassed for her.
Here instead the murder (if there is even a murder) is obviously permitted, and so morally ambiguous we--like the protagonist--are never really sure what we think about it and it all seems beside the point, the point being the portrait of an emotionally and sexually needy man between gigs as it were weighing his options. That's all. Also, there's an exotic location, Tunisia, but not much more to it than that. (Oh, and I should say it might be a nod to Camus's The Stranger, or even a send-up, pointing out that for all Camus's existential querying, he never bothers to think of the murder victim as a real person or that Meursault could be in any way guilty of killing an actual human being. We have a clearly misguided American patriot and Christian character here as a kind of foil to the North African ennui/European existential blase-ity. He was at times a Samaritan and then at times seemed to be veering toward the villain of the piece--but no crime, no villain, no real drama here, just a portrait.)
Also it's Highsmith's usually fine prose, with the exception of the opening chapter: one of the worst I've ever read! Just a big info dump as the kids say, a bland and seemingly hurried exposition bringing us up to speed with no art to it at all. I was embarrassed for her.