Move over Ripley.If you read suspense and have not read Patricia Highsmith yet, first of all, shame on you and second, you have some weird and wonderful (and terrifying) books ahead. No one wrote like Highsmith did, and at the time she did. Her novels deliver in the classic thriller/mystery/suspense department for those of you simply looking for an edgy ride over a psychological cliff but they’re also weighty and literate and truly unique. Her characters are odd, not in the Elmore Leonard sense, but bizarre and wretched. And real.Highsmith wasn’t afraid to take time to get a story rolling, as many authors are (especially nowadays) and although that may fail her from time to time, the reader has time to soak in the disturbed world she creates with those deviant but everyday characters. She’s written a dog or two (IMHO) but every great author has. It’s part of reaching for the kind of stories that more often than not, leave a mark.About a third of the way through The Glass Cell, I thought I was reading one of Highsmith’s dogs. I’ve already read all her well-known work (Strangers on a Train is a must-read. If you don’t believe me, believe Hitchcock who made Highsmith’s first novel into an excellent movie) and thought I was scraping the bottom of the Highsmith barrel.There are real flaws with the first third of Glass Cell, the story of a man who goes to prison for six years on a fraudulent charge. Key events happen off camera, important characters are not physically described, and Highsmith’s slow-burn prose feels like it’s meandering.But then Philip Carter, our ill-fated anti-hero, gets out of prison, physically and mentally damaged, craving morphine, and learns that his beautiful wife has most likely been having a six-year-long affair with his lawyer. And then the people who set Carter up come back into the picture. Mostly because he pulls them back in but it seems inevitable and warranted that Carter does some of the things he does to them.And the reader ends up rooting for a milquetoast turned drug-addled psychopath. I was never a huge sympathizer of Ripley, one of Highsmith’s more fantastic characters, but Carter had my complete compassion no matter what he did to the people who treated him so poorly. Highsmith is famous for her Ripley books (and the first one should be on your to-read list) but whereas Ripley is prickly and frightening Carter is your unstable friend who just can’t catch a break. Stay inside The Glass Cell and you won’t be disappointed.
Of the three recently read Highsmiths, this is the best. Engineer Philip Carter is wrongly-imprisoned and spends six years inside, slowly becoming addicted to morphine and paranoid that his wife is having an affair with lawyer David Sullivan. During his incarceration Carter becomes hardened both physically and emotionally, capable of murder. Perhaps surprisingly for a female writer, Highsmith's male characters are more rounded and credible than their female counterparts who tend to be stereotypically beautiful, wealthy and guilty and this remains true for Hazel Carter. Released, Carter slowly begins to rebuild his life, but Sullivan's influence remains. A much better read than A Suspension of Mercy, with a clearly ambiguous ending that remains satisfying.
What do You think about The Glass Cell (2004)?
This is my fifteenth Highsmith book and it covers new ground. The change in setting to a prison brings a new mix of problems to her characters. In classic Highsmith storytelling, (view spoiler)[Philip Carter is punished for the things he did not do, but gets away with the crimes that he actually commits (hide spoiler)]
—Hans
I begin this post with a warning to the many devoted Goldfinch fans who evidently put the latest Tartt magnum opus on a par with the Bible. You won’t like this, not one little bit. You see, I put down The Goldfinch smack bang in the middle of it and picked up The Glass Cell, which I didn’t stop reading until I finished it. ‘OMG, How COULD you? The greatest book in the whole history of books ever and you did THAT????’ I can hear them all, as I write. Well, I did, so there.I needed to take something to an afternoon of film noir and the only goldfinch in existence which weighs two ton was not what I was going to take with me. For a start, what if it pooed in the cinema? That alone would weigh more than this petite offering from Highsmith.Rest here:http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
—notgettingenough
In The Glass Cell, the MC is an ordinary guy who is wrongly convicted of a crime. The first half of the book covers his six years in prison; the second half what happens when he returns "home" (to where his wife now lives). TGC is billed as a psychological thriller, but that's not really accurate. It works as a psychological study, but it's lacking the sense of suspense that Highsmith's more well-known books have. It's not thrilling. It is sad. If you're looking for cheery escapism, this is not your book.
—Theryn Fleming
