When it comes to normalizing the problematic behaviours of white male sociopaths, there’s really no one like Patricia Highsmith. Well, I say “sociopath” for effect, but this guy’s no Tom Ripley; actually, my armchair diagnosis is narcissistic personality disorder with escalating dissociative episodes.
However you want to frame it, our hero David Kelsey is in his twenties, fairly good-looking, well-educated, and working in a good (or at least well-paying) job. He is also leading a double life, in which he imagines himself married to his dream girl from his home town, Annabelle. The fact that Annabelle in fact has a husband and new baby, not to mention that she repeatedly asks him not to contact her, is regarded by David as a mere inconvenience. Astoundingly, David has some nice, normal friends that he fails to appreciate in any way, including a sweet girl who is inexplicably in love with him.
All of that information might be of interest to me if I cared the slightest bit about this protagonist. I do not. I cannot arouse in myself the slightest shred of sympathetic attention for a man who is unable to hear a woman say in clear words of unambiguous meaning that she is uninterested in him. It was obvious from the outset (not least because he’s a Highsmith protagonist) that David was heading for one or more violent outbursts, and all I could think was that I hope he got cotched good. I hoped a matronly female cop slapped the cuffs on him while her auburn-haired younger partner read him his rights. I hoped he was cross-examined by Assistant District Attorney Katie Holmes from Batman Begins in front of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and then convicted by a sternly disapproving jury of Glenn Close lookalikes. Because fuck this guy.
Look, it’s not out of the question that someone might enjoy this book. It’s written well, the escalation is subtle but unmistakeable, and there’s a sense of inevitability about the plot that gives it the tang of fatalism that certain readers crave. I can’t really imagine any enlightened woman reading it without rolling her eyes and flicking to the end to make sure he got what was coming to him, but my imagination is not omniscient. Marieke Hardy chose it for next month’s Book Club, after all, so she must have got something out of it – but then, she also likes Kingley Amis, so. Anyway, caveat lector.