Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith

(pb; 1977)

From the back cover

“Edith’s Howland’s diary provided a reflective interlude in her busy day. This  ‘fine and chilling character study’ (Newsweek), though, charts a diary gone wrong: as Edith’s life turns sour, her diary entries only grow brighter. While her life plunges into chaos─her husband abandons her for a younger woman, leaving her with their delinquent son and his senile uncle─a tale of success and happiness blooms in her notebook.”

Review

Diary is an exceptional novel. Its setup, with its suburban unease, the characters’ festering-slivers-under-the-skin grievances, and other unsettling elements, is reminiscent of her 1983 novel People Who Knock on the Door. Unlike People, however, Diary lacks the religious criticism and violence that of the similar, pressure-build-up book. (I think of Diary as an earlier, notably different version of People, one that stands on its own merits.)  

Diary, which runs from the early sixties to the early seventies, tracks Edith’s further spiral into delusion and real-world danger, even as her emotionally distant husband leaves her and her lazy, angry and murderous son sinks deeper into alcoholism and futility. The sense of urgency surrounding her situation grows more intense as the story progresses, leading to a finish that─if it seems quiet or underwhelming─matches Edith’s quiet desperation and increasingly fierce blurring of delusion and reality.

Whenever I hear the phrase “character study” I usually translate it to mean self-indulgent, pointless and meandering work. Thankfully master writers like Highsmith belie that translation, make character studies worthwhile and exciting for readers like myself. Worth reading, even owning, this.