Friday's Forgotten Book: Patricia Highsmith: Ripley Under Water

I'm not sure if a Tom Ripley novel by Patricia Highsmith is forgotten, but they don't really seem to get the merit they deserve. The books are strangely appealing, even though there's a nihilistic streak to them. It seems to make the books more enticing, though.

In Ripley Under Water Ripley is suddenly threatened by a strange American couple, who seem to know something about Ripley's shady past and some killings he's done. Ripley of course wants to get rid of them, but there's also another reason: he thinks they are irritating, behave badly, disturbing the peace of the French countryside. It's entertaining that Ripley can consider murdering people only for behaving badly in public, not playing by the rules. Ripley only wants to spend time with his beautiful wife, play some music, do some amateur paintings of his own, eat the good food his maid prepares. In Highsmith's world, this can be sometimes achieved only through murder.

Ripley Under Water suffers somewhat from being too slow, especially in the middle when nothing much happens, but the ending is strong.

More Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott's blog here.

Edit: of course I meant "appealing", but this went as "strangely appalling" for many days. I noticed it, but couldn't do anything about it as I was travelling!

Patricia Highsmith: The Cry of the Owl

Seems to me that people mostly remember Patricia Highsmith from her Tom Ripley books (which are very good, so I'm not complaining) and Strangers on a Train (would they if Hitchcock hadn't made the film?). Her other stand-alones can also be very effective, and The Cry of the Wolf from 1962 is indeed very effective.

The book's a story about a young man who seems to dislike other people and stalks a young woman who's living alone in a house some miles away from the city. The girl does have a boyfriend, but when she spots the young stalker and responses to him kindly, a very strange relationship starts to develop. It seems for quite a while that this is a rare murderless crime novel, but in the end there's one. I won't say anything more. This is a good example of female noir, the subgenre Highsmith shared with the likes of Margaret Millar, Doris Miles Disney, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding, Ursula Curtiss and others. Higsmith might be the cruellest of them all.

I see only just now that there is a rather recent movie based on this. Anyone seen it? Is it any good?

Edit: I was told that Claude Chabrol also made a film out of this, called Le cri du hibou (1987).

Friday's Forgotten Book: Patricia Highsmith's A Game for the Living

It's been a while since I last read something by Patricia Highsmith. I haven't read enough of her work to call myself a fan, but I've liked what I've read. For some reason or another, it's almost twenty years since I've read any of the Tom Ripleys.

But I have a book project for which I'm supposed to read some Highsmith. I grabbed one of the Finnish translations from the shelf, but it proved to be one of her weaker books - or at least that's what I think. It was A Game for the Living from 1959, translated literally as Peli eläville in 2000. It's set in Mexico which makes it resemble some of Margaret Millar's work, but Millar seems quite liberal compared to Highsmith when it comes to her depiction of the Mexicans. Highsmith's view of them is racist: the Mexicans are stupid, arrogant, child-like, corrupt, violent, acting on a whim. One of the whims is a deadly one: a beautiful woman who's affiliated with many artists is killed brutally and the two men with whom she was in love with begin to act out their own guilts.

This seemed interesting at first, but then it bogged down to a mediocre thriller, with too many scenes in which the lead men were just suffering. The climax wasn't very grabbing, I'm sorry to say. It has to be said, though, that I had some difficulties to concentrate in reading the book - I had to read some other stuff at the same time and that always eats the experience. I'd be interested to hear about other opinions on the book.

Other Forgotten Books for this Friday can be found here at Patti Abbott's great blog.