{"id":3135,"date":"2018-05-08T08:50:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T13:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/?p=3135"},"modified":"2018-08-08T12:54:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T17:54:02","slug":"the-crime-writer-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/president\/2018\/05\/08\/the-crime-writer-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crime Writer: A Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jill Dawson<\/h2>\n

Harper Perennial, 2017<\/h4>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Crime Writer<\/em> begins with an unusual premise. It creates a fictional character based upon the real-life American writer of psychological thrillers, Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), and then tells a story about her that places the fictional Highsmith in situations like the ones characters in her novels face. Essentially, Dawson makes another writer a character in that writer\u2019s own world.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

However, you don\u2019t need to have read Patricia Highsmith\u2019s twenty-two novels (I certainly haven\u2019t) in order to enjoy The Crime Writer<\/em>. It\u2019s a straight-up psychological thriller. Patricia Highsmith (the fictional character) is an American writer of note who has come to live in a small village in England to work on a novel. She is in love with an English woman who is married to a man who abuses her emotionally and physically. The two women have to steal time on weekends and under pretense to be together. Their relationship is passionate, intense, and difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Highsmith herself is a generally difficult person. An alcoholic, she shuns the company of most other people and most of all shuns attention from the press because of notoriety as a writer. An attractive younger woman makes her acquaintance and seems to be insinuating herself into Highsmith\u2019s life for reasons that are unclear at first. So, a difficult person with at least two difficult relationships laced with sexual passion and blurred by alcohol, not to mention gender politics\u2014what could go wrong?
\n<\/span>
\nLots of things, and you will discover what they are when you read the novel, which probes and tests conventional notions of right and wrong. Dostoevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment<\/em> is always playing in the background of The Crime Writer.<\/em> What\u2014if anything\u2014justifies the taking of another life? What kind of personality even asks that question in the context of her intimate relationships?
\n<\/span>
\nGraham Greene called the writer Patricia Highsmith \u201cthe poet of apprehension.\u201d There is a lot of that in this disturbing but compelling novel.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Back to the Bookshelf<\/a><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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