I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read Highsmith before now. I saw “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and it made me feel uneasy. This book does that as well and in spades.
Edith’s rapidly deteriorating life is simply far too relatable - the kid who just tries to pluck her wires, who has an evil undercurrent to his every smile - the husband who falls in love with someone and abandons Edith, offering scant help and depositing his elderly uncle on her for care - the ‘kindly’ neighbours who may or may not be so.
And Edith herself, a very unreliable narrator who takes refuge in her huge diary, changing her life story in it to one happier than her real one...
It’s a very sad story of a woman who, though bright and accomplished, is being squashed by unreasonable expectations and giving in, slowly, to fantasies of a better world. To add to her pressures, this is the time of the Kennedy assassinations, Nixon, Viet Nam... it’s no wonder she takes to writing small, violent fictions.
Help comes too late, too little. The ending is heartbreaking.
It isn’t a comfortable book. It is, however, stunningly good. ( )

This book made me miserable while I read it. The characters are so stupid. The husband is just this bleh person, the wife is also a bleh person, the son is just a total f****** bum. I'm surprised their family didn't disintegrate years before it did.
But here's some quotes:
P.97:
" 'I suppose it's a shock,' Brett said. 'But I just couldn't go on like this, pretending -- or seeing Carol on the sly. It's not my nature.'
Then Edith had remembered the New York research expeditions [supposedly for a book he was writing] since January. He had of course been seeing Carol those Saturday afternoons. And maybe it had been 3 months since she and Brett had made love? Edith hadn't the faintest idea or memory, because the act of making love didn't seem terribly important. Yet, she reminded herself, what else was Brett talking about now in regard to carol? As cliffie would have put it, he wanted to screw a younger woman while he still could, while a younger woman would still have him. And in the midst of her confusion or speechlessness, Edith had still been able to think, she remembered, that she wasn't the first woman in the world to whom such a thing had happened, who had had to listen to the same Earnest speech from an honest man who really meant what he was saying."

Brett's Uncle George, who he had invited to live with them when they bought a house in pennsylvania, gets left with Edith when Brett moves in with carol. Uncle George refuses to get up, has to be served with a tray for every meal, and eventually has to use a bedpan which Edith has to clean after every use.
P.138:
"... Cliffie leaned closer and whispered, 'wake up! Before it's too late!'
Then abruptly cliffie was tired of the game, disgusted and somehow ashamed of the old guy in bed, the pain in the ass who took up a room in the house and crapped in the white, blue-trimmed bedpan, the crap which his mother had to poke down the john. 'Christ!' cliffie whispered. 'I hope the hell you f*** off today! Why not? Why not?' Cliffie's eyes bulged, and he spit the words out. He would have loved to give George a good solid kick in the ribs before departing, his right foot even raised itself a little from the floor, but cliffie knew that would be going too far. Furthermore, he knew he'd better leave before his parents came up for Brett to say goodbye or some such muck, so cliffie went out and down the stairs."

Edith and her silly editorials in their little Mickey mouse newsrag, gets her in trouble with her friends and neighbors.
" ...'look at operation head-start, mainly for black kids, let's face it. It's been called a failure, but it was a wonderful idea at first, to start those kids out in school 2 years before kids usually go to school, start them reading.'
'Johnson said it was a failure?' Gert asked in a surprised tone.
Edith nodded. 'I read it somewhere. Well it wasn't the hoped-for success. There is one way to break this down backwardness of the blacks, and she put backwardness in quotes by the tone of her voice, 'that's to take them away from their parents when they're two or even one year old, and bring them up among middle-class whites -- you know, with books and music in the house and a stable home life. Then we'd see --'
'wha-at? Pretty drastic,' Gert said, now bringing a big blue plastic bowl of peach ice cream to the table.
'Yes,' Edith went on in a gentle voice, thinking a soft approach might sink in better, 'but it's the only way to break the vicious circle. No matter how good schools are, kids still spend more time out of school than in. If colored kids were brought up in white households, we'd see -- or prove -- that environmental and economic conditions are more important than heredity.' "

What kept me reading this to the end was a morbid fascination. ( )

Reading this felt like a chore, so I stopped.

Another amazing Highsmith book. It was so good that i started reading it slower because i wanted the experience to last longer. So painful, so drawn out, so real. Liberal 50ish husband runs off with his 25 year old gal pal, leaving his liberal 40ish wife the house, their layabout and empty son and his (the husbands) through with life invalid uncle. She bears up for years and years and years... husband is always wanting to "help" by giving money or advice on what to do with the uncle- he's awful! She concocts her parallel life with her successful son and his wife and kids in her diary. She writes her awful husband out of existence and other useful things. She's eventually hounded down for being crazy ... what a great book. don't feel it needed to end that way... (dying via a fall down the stairs). would have liked to see what the next 20 years would have done for Edith. ( )

In questo libro la Highsmith da il meglio di se. Follia profonda. Bello bello! ( )