Edith's Diary - Softcover

Patricia Highsmith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140048022 ISBN 13: 9780140048025

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1980

Synopsis

As Edith Howland's life becomes harsh, her diary entries only become brighter and brighter. She invents a happy life. As she knits for imaginary grandchildren, the real world recedes. Her descent into madness is subtle, appalling, and entirely believable.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger'. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

Review

Edith's Diary is certainly one of the saddest novels I ever read, but it is also one of the mere twenty or so that I would say were perfect, unimprovable masterpieces -- A.N Wilson * Daily Telegraph * As original, as funny, as cleverly written and as moving as any novel I have read since I started reviewing -- Auberon Waugh * The Evening Standard * A work of extraordinary force and feeling . . . her strongest, her most imaginative and by far her most substantial novel -- New Yorker * New Yorker * Highsmith probes to the very core of her heroine with a controlled ferocity and single-mindedness that illumines every page of her novel. It is a masterly book, a haunting book, a book that lingers long in the memory and constantly disturbs and delights. -- The Times * The Times * Edith's fall takes the form of a psychological chiller, but there is also something larger, the poignancy of her struggle not to go under. She is betrayed by such ordinary dreams * New York Times * Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing ....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night * The New Yorker *

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140048022
• ISBN 13: 9780140048025
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 318