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You Can't Catch Me (1995)

di Rosamond Smith

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
562463,519 (3.7)3
A "sinister, edgy, delectably creepy" story of mistaken identity, murder, and madness from a #1 New York Times-bestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle).   Tristram Heade is a reclusive, repressed Virginia bachelor and antiquarian book collector who has traveled to Philadelphia to keep an appointment with a fellow dealer. But when he arrives, his life takes an unexpected and dizzying turn. A train porter returns his lost wallet, but the identification inside belongs to a man named Angus Markham, a gambler and real estate prospector.   When Tristram returns to his hotel, he's greeted by staff as Markham, and in his room, he finds Markham's suitcase and clothes--as well as Fleur Grunwald, a woman who certainly knows her lover, Markham, when she sees him. And she seems to desperately need his help.   At first baffled, then intrigued, Tristram decides to play along--only to discover that he's not in control of the game. Especially when he takes on Fleur and her sadistic husband and finds himself lost in a conspiracy of madness and murder. If only Tristram could be certain whether he's to be the killer--or the victim.   From a winner of countless awards, the author of such bestsellers as We Were the Mulvaneys and Black Water, You Can't Catch Me is "a tense psychological suspense novel filled with dual identities, double crosses, and duplicity. It is also filled with philosophical and literary allusions suggesting that this is less about the mystery of Markham than about the fragile mystery of identity. It's just what one would expect from the celebrated Joyce Carol Oates, who uses the pseudonym 'Rosamond Smith' for her psychological thrillers" (Library Journal).… (altro)
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When the set up becomes clear, you think you know where this story is going to go. We’ve seen the movies and read the books. Femme fatale gets stupid male to fall in love with her based on her beauty and victimhood. Of course her husband is her main threat and if he were out of her life she would of course throw herself at her dupe and devote the rest of her life to his happiness. Playing on his need to be the hero and demonstrate all of his most manly traits, he agrees to kill her husband so they can live happily ever after.

But it doesn’t turn out like that. Not in the usual stories and not in this one. I’m not that familiar with Oates’s work, but I knew to expect something different. Even if i wasn’t there are some things that would have telegraphed it anyway. Primarily is Tristram’s duality. He seems genuinely perplexed about Angus Markham. The other man’s things keep being delivered to his hotel room and despite they not being like anything he himself would have chosen, he admires them and begins to think of them as his own. Quickly he justifies his assuming Markham’s life and, weirdly, his physical and emotional characteristics. Almost overnight the meek and mild Tristram is transformed into the bold, confident Markham. He notices the change himself, but can’t decide on why he feels and acts so differently.

By now the plot is well underway, and he’s enthralled to Fleur, but then Zoe comes out of nowhere. Whenever Fleur conveniently faints, she surfaces, her polar opposite and makes good on the promises Fleur cannot bring herself to endure. Tristram is overwhelmed by the two personalities in the woman and decides to strike. Amazingly he finds just the right attire for a gentleman cat-burglar in Markham’s things and sets out in a delirium to dispatch the loathsome Grunwald only to be unable to finish the job even when confronted with the apparent truth of Fleur’s outrageous tales of brutality and torture.

The newspaper reports Grunwald’s death the next day. How can that be? Tristram left him alive in his cave of horrors, how could he have died there? Who then, did he stab to death in the tunnel in the park? Confused, rebuffed by fleur and unaided by Zoe, he is left to wonder at the truth. Further and further he splinters - Tristram and Markham - which one sees Fleur and her step-nephew snuggling in a convertible? Which flees the luxe hotel and goes from fleapit to fleapit, pursued by a mysterious man in a fedora? The final confrontation shows us the truth - that Tristram is in fact Markham and has been assuming identity after identity, ensnaring couple after couple, marrying, murdering, inheriting. Never getting caught. Never remembering his crimes. It’s a bit long in getting there, but the end is pretty great. The power of self-delusion and being used and manipulated by others in exactly the way he’s done for years. Nice, delicious, but strangely open-ended. Does Tristram/Markham recover and resume his life of crime or does his Tristram persona finally cause his implosion?
There is a lot that is up to the reader to assume about how he ends up, but it's still pretty entertaining and satisfying. ( )
1 vota Bookmarque | Feb 13, 2018 |
Detta är en historia som till en början är mycket mystisk. Och fängslande. Man vill verkligen veta vad som händer den gode Tristan Heade. Och Smith lyckas verkligen med att hålla spänningen uppe genom att ge små ledtrådar... samtidigt till läsare och huvudperson.
Men sedan tappar det fart. Och intresset avtar. Fast inte så mycket att man inte vill fortsätta. Upplösningen känns till slut ganska given, men det är nog upplagt så. Så intrycket dalar lite efterhand.

När Joyce Carol Oates skriver under pseudonymen Rosamond Smith tar hon tyvärr med sig sin tnedens att ge långtråkiga beskrivningar. Den kan vara människors utseenden eller ett rums beskaffenhet hon vill förmedla. Men det blir alltför långrandigt, och ärligt... Hur mycket info man än får om en romanlkaraktärs utseende stämmer det mycket sällan med den bild man själv skapar. Bort det. ( )
  helices | Oct 30, 2008 |
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A "sinister, edgy, delectably creepy" story of mistaken identity, murder, and madness from a #1 New York Times-bestselling author (San Francisco Chronicle).   Tristram Heade is a reclusive, repressed Virginia bachelor and antiquarian book collector who has traveled to Philadelphia to keep an appointment with a fellow dealer. But when he arrives, his life takes an unexpected and dizzying turn. A train porter returns his lost wallet, but the identification inside belongs to a man named Angus Markham, a gambler and real estate prospector.   When Tristram returns to his hotel, he's greeted by staff as Markham, and in his room, he finds Markham's suitcase and clothes--as well as Fleur Grunwald, a woman who certainly knows her lover, Markham, when she sees him. And she seems to desperately need his help.   At first baffled, then intrigued, Tristram decides to play along--only to discover that he's not in control of the game. Especially when he takes on Fleur and her sadistic husband and finds himself lost in a conspiracy of madness and murder. If only Tristram could be certain whether he's to be the killer--or the victim.   From a winner of countless awards, the author of such bestsellers as We Were the Mulvaneys and Black Water, You Can't Catch Me is "a tense psychological suspense novel filled with dual identities, double crosses, and duplicity. It is also filled with philosophical and literary allusions suggesting that this is less about the mystery of Markham than about the fragile mystery of identity. It's just what one would expect from the celebrated Joyce Carol Oates, who uses the pseudonym 'Rosamond Smith' for her psychological thrillers" (Library Journal).

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