As Michael Dirda assured me in his reviews of Patricia Highsmith books, I really enjoyed Edith's Diary and whipped through it quickly. Like watching a train wreck, I could not keep from reading about Edith’s devastating emotional and mental decline. She seems to operate well creatively (writing and sculpting, cleaning and working) yet hits the truth with her comment early on after her worthless son, Cliffie, expresses an interest in Uncle George’s codeine cough medicine: “We’re all crackers,” Edith thought, “all insane…” She seems productive, preparing meals, going to work, writing articles for her local newspaper but her diary entries clue us in that all is not well. She imagines a perfect fantasy world in her diary early in the novel: “The entry was a lie. But after all who was going to see it? And she felt better, having written it, felt less melancholic, almost cheerful, in fact.” The calmness and matter-of-fact narration belies the increasing madness of her heroine. My sympathy for Edith started to grow at this point. She’s depressed and troubled but trying to keep a lid on it not unlike her driving: “She was tempted to put on speed, but prudently kept within the limit, a discipline she found easy.” She also “stifled her anger” on hearing of her ex-husband’s new baby and frequently smothers her rage at her philandering husband. A further key to her state is the frequent reference to her smiling, her laughter, giggles and hilarity when she might be expected to be angry. The abyss Edith feels early on grows and swallows her by novel’s end and Highsmith provides no respite for the reader. Does she believe in nature or nuture? Highsmith has said that it’s the former which produces the criminal mind and Edith (like Highsmith) has a cold, unsatisfactory relationship with her parents as the incorrigible Cliffie does with Edith.I haven’t encountered this much drinking in a novel since The Thin Man Friends and neighbors drop by for drinks at every hour of the day. Visits dwindle as Edith’s mental state declines and soon it is mainly her psychotic son, Cliffie, joining her for cocktails and wine at dinner. The denouement is a surprise but fitting as the other options of psychoanalysis in that day (and the creepy doctors her ex-husband brings over) offer unlikely solutions for Edith and there is a nice wrap up in being brought down by her own idealized creation of her son.From Dirda: "Like Oscar Wilde, Highsmith insisted (in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction1966) that art essentially has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing.... I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial, for neither life nor nature care if justice is ever done or not. The murder in the novel is left vague and the obvious evildoer goes unpunished."
Angoscioso e angosciante. Assolutamente da non leggersi nel caso non si viva un periodo di forma smagliante. Personalmente, non ho trovato la modalità espressiva particolarmente brillante. Anzi, diciamo pure che tende al mediocre. Tuttavia l’andamento della storia è notevole. Propone una situazione indagata da un solo punto di vista, e solo saltuariamente da altri, che costringe, inesorabilmente, la protagonista ad “andare in buca”, per così dire, laddove la “buca” è da intendersi come uno straniamento totale rispetto alla realtà. Forme diverse di egoismo che, ritrovandosi a stretto contatto, finiscono per nuocersi a vicenda, anche se non era quello il loro scopo. Una fondamentale incapacità di comunicare, benché non voluta, che conduce tutti, per vie diverse, a una differente forma di follia. Dà di che pensare, persino oltre i temi esplicitamente proposti, però. Diciamo che è un romanzo riuscito e non riuscito al contempo. Leggerlo non sarà del tutto tempo perso.
What do You think about Edith's Diary (1994)?
Edith lives two lives: in her diary, she has a happy family, her husband is loving and her son is successful; in reality, she has a dysfunctional family, her son is alcoholic and her husband is cheating. As her diary turns page by page, her utopian life climbs up higher and higher, to almost perfection; as reality moves day by day, her factual life sinks lower and lower, until the boredom and heavyweight routine gradually erodes her tender heart, consumes her vital energy, take away her sanity and eventually crashes her life.Among all Patricia Highsmith's novels I have read -the most famous ones would be The stranger on the train, Ripliad series, Edith Diary is undoubtedly the most thrilling. The character (Edith) she crafted is extremely convincing, the scenario she conceived is hauntingly thought-provoking.Highsmith is a master of creating antiheroes or psychopaths. In most of her books I have read, the antagonists are seemingly "normal" but possessed with "abnormal" desires or motives, but in Edith Diary, Edith is not at all a psychopath, instead, she is a normal middle class woman, a devoted housewife and mother, with a liberal mind that is compassionate to poors, cynic toward hypocritical power classes. But with such personality, she is cheated by husband, estranged by her son and her close friends, and at the end, she is pushed to a corner where she is "suffocated" by steadfast yet overwhelming misunderstanding, disbelief and selfishness from people she loves.It is a depressing yet profoundly disturbing story. It shows the contract between "unique" and "normal", forces readers to ask questions like: why does a person like Edith live such a miserable life? And this novel is not just novel, because what happens to Edith are totally possible in real life. As matter of fact, it reminds me Van Gogh, a passionate mind that was mistaken as insanity.I have no doubt that in this book Highsmith expressed her extreme detestation toward "mediocrity", or so called "ordinary" majority. Perhaps, she wanted to show us the selfishness, hypocrisy, even the cruelty behind something we know as "normal". And she succeeded.
—Yun Yi
Reading Highsmith when fragile or feeling down is like a bad trip. Well, what I imagine a bad trip would feel like. The book's probably great, but I was in the wrong mood when I read it and man, did it worsen things. It made me incredibly ill at ease and got me into a rare quarrel where I got quite hysterical, I'm embarrassed to say. I don't blame Highsmith. After years of reading her I should know this. Anyway, my point is I can't rate this accurately because just thinking about it makes me shudder, and it should be read by those more robust than me.
—Bibliophile
"O mundo é um palco.""O Diário de Edith" é um livro sobre uma família: sobre as mudanças e as rotinas, sobre os acontecimentos felizes e tristes e sobre todos os pequenos detalhes que preenchem a vida de uma mulher inteligente, que procura alcançar o equilíbrio no mundo real através de fantasias e histórias.Uma história perturbadora e emocionante que nos faz refletir na importância de irmos para além do nosso pequeno mundo, para além do que é palpável e real. E afinal, que mal faz sonhar acordado? Patricia Highsmith descreve o ser humano com uma precisão que nunca vi, até hoje, noutro autor. A complexidade dos traços da personalidade e os sentimentos parecem simples nas suas palavras, mas o tom que lhes confere transporta-nos muito além da ficção.
—Maria João Fernandes
