‘Considering he was a friend of yours,’ Joel began, just as Vic had known he would, ‘I don’t think it’s very funny of you to joke about his death.’
‘He wasn’t a friend of mine.’
‘Of your wife’s.’
‘A different matter, you’ll admit.’ [p. 18]
First published in 1957, but doesn't feel at all dated, though the scenes of small-town New England life in the Fifties -- parties, swimming pools, part-time jobs for the wealthy, so much drinking, a certain amount of period-typical discrimination -- do have a retro, gilded ambience.
Vic and Melinda van Allen live a comfortable life in Little Wesley, mostly because Vic lets Melinda take lovers whenever she wishes. 'It was not that he objected to Melinda’s having affairs with other men per se... it was that she picked such idiotic, spineless characters.' [p. 28] Vic would rather read books (he's a small-press publisher) and breed snails. Nothing in the agreement says that he has to like her lovers, though: he drives off one especially repugnant contender by claiming to have murdered a previous beau. Vic likes this story, and embellishes it to himself, though fairly soon the actual murderer confesses. But the seed has been sown, and for Vic it's a small step from pretence to reality.
The narrative is tightly woven with Vic's inner life, and his gradual (and perfectly rational) transformation from patient cuckold to psychopath. It's easy to like him, easy to dislike Melinda and feel contempt for her rather vulgar behaviour -- not to mention her lack of engagement with their daughter, Trixie -- and easy to accept Vic's gradual disintegration, his lapses of memory, his sudden flares of emotion, his odd impulses. What I did end up wondering was why he and Melinda had married at all ...
Highsmith's writing is a masterclass in psychology and in writing tight third-person viewpoint: there are moments of humour (usually in dialogue) and of considerable poignancy. I hope to read, or reread, more of her work.
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