A Suspension of Mercy
by Patricia Highsmith
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Book Summary Information
Author: Patricia HighsmithEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2001-08
ISBN: 0393321975
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of A Suspension of Mercy
Book Review: From unbridled imagination to unbridled rage
Summary: 5 Stars
Patricia Highsmith's strengths have always been the meticulous development of her sociopaths and psychopaths, and her ability to make the monstrous seem ordinary. In "A Suspension of Mercy," Sydney Bartleby is a married writer whose fertile imagination takes over his psyche. An unsuccessful thriller writer, Sydney is constantly bickering with his wife, Alicia, until she decides one day to leave him for a few months and re-evaluate whether she'd like to stay married to him or not. While gone, Sydney pretends that he had murdered his wife, and disposed of her body wrapped in an old rug and buried it in the woods, all ostensibly as research for a future book. His ghoulish imagination takes complete control of him that he starts acting guilty when Alicia's absence becomes a police matter. From Sydney's neighbor to his closest friends, everyone becomes convinced that he did indeed do away with Alicia. Real life and imagined life converge to the degree that Sydney becomes unhinged (if he wasn't already) and dangerous.
I think very few genre writers such as Highsmith can get away with an implausible story (one is immediately reminded of "Strangers on a Train" where two strangers swap murders, and of course, her Ripley series.) And she does get away with these absurdities because in her stories, there's always some undefined terror that's just biding time, hidden in mundane everyday lives, waiting to jump out at just the right Highsmithian moment. I remember reading some article a long time ago that termed this particular ingredient in her books as "commonplace deviancy," which makes them far more disturbing and creepy than those that employ conventional scare tactics. "A Suspension of Mercy," like many in her oeuvre, is Kafkaesque with its hopelessness, absurdities, alienation, persecution, and most notably in how its protagonist "invents a struggle." It is at times funny in a biting and sardonic way. Halfway through, the reader doesn't really know whether Sydney's irrational actions mean he's merely carried away with formulating a plot for a future book or if he's truly going bonkers. Either way, it's an absorbing read--a literary thriller with sharply-drawn characters from an acknowledged master of misanthropy.
BTW, there are no happy endings in Highsmith novels (except for "The Price of Salt"), a natural predilection for someone who abhorred the artificiality of justice for the good and punishment for the bad in fiction. Thus, if one wishes such satisfaction, it will not be found here. Highsmith is an acquired taste, I think, for her stories mostly repel by their sheer exaggerated eccentricity, but I'll be darned if they aren't oddly addictive.
Summary of A Suspension of Mercy
A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.United States Books
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