A review by scottjeffe
The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith

3.0

Some books leave you saying, "what was that ABOUT?" The Tremor of Forgery was such a book for me. Being by Highsmith, I kept waiting for Howard to kill someone or go completely off the rails. It's not that I couldn't see the links between the book that Howard was writing and what Howard was doing and going through, but I just didn't think it worked very well. For me the most interesting thing about the book was the homosexual character and his primary placement in the book. For a book written in 1969 I expected the words "queer" and "faggot" but I didn't expect that (to some extent) he was the most rational person in the book. He didn't have any of the hangups or neuroses of the other characters. Was this because he was gay, or because he was not American???? Loved that element of this otherwise odd book.