A review by apechild
The Tremor Of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith

3.0

Bit of an odd one. All the classic Highsmith writing and yet nothing happens. It just ends and I'm thinking... did I miss something? But it's so well written in her usual way, with this feeling of an underlying threat or something not quite right that it was addictive reading for me. Reading about Americans hanging out in Tunisia in the 1960s (I do also love her stories that are about Americans in other countries) and comparing the Arab lifestyle with the American way of life, particularly with this strange middle aged man, OWL who is randomly paid by Russians to do radio broadcasts about how great America is. Howard Ingham's gone over to Tunisia to write a script with a director that they plan to film in Tunisia. He waits and waits and no one turns up or replies to his letters (the good old days before mobile phones and the internet). In the meantime he relaxes into the heat and the life there, starts writing another novel. The woman he thinks he is in love with comes over, he desperately wants to marry her then he doesn't. There's something in this experience of living abroad, taking yourself out of the cultural context of home and discovering just who you are that appears in this story. There's also robberies and some killings, but nobody seems desperately fussed about them - apparently the arabs all feels it's god's will so they don't stress about it - and... yeah, nothing does happen. And at the end Howard goes back to New York. Honestly, not her best work, and it leaves me a little baffled. Maybe it was a bit of a fun writing project at the time.