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    Deep Water
    Unavailable
    Deep Water
    Unavailable
    Deep Water
    Audiobook10 hours

    Deep Water

    Written by Patricia Highsmith

    Narrated by Paul Boehmer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with this work that reveals the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.

    In Deep Water, set in the small town of Little Wesley, Vic and Melinda Meller's loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Eventually, Vic tries to win her back by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder-one that soon comes true.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9780804164979
    Unavailable
    Deep Water
    Author

    Patricia Highsmith

    Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) es una de las escritoras más originales y perturbadoras de la narrativa contemporánea. En Anagrama se han publicado las novelas Extraños en un tren, El cuchillo, Carol, El talento de Mr. Ripley (Premio Edgar Allan Poe y Gran Premio de la Literatura Policíaca), Mar de fondo, Un juego para los vivos, Ese dulce mal, El grito de la lechuza, Las dos caras de enero, La celda de cristal, Crímenes imaginarios, El temblor de la falsificación, El juego del escondite, Rescate por un perro, El amigo americano, El diario de Edith, Tras los pasos de Ripley, Gente que llama a la puerta, El hechizo de Elsie, Ripley en peligro y Small G: un idilio de verano, los libros de relatos Pequeños cuentos misóginos, Crímenes bestiales, Sirenas en el campo de golf, Catástrofes, Los cadáveres exquisitos, Pájaros a punto de volar, Una afición peligrosa y Relatos (que incluye los primeros cinco libros de cuentos de la autora, tres de los cuales –Once, A merced del viento y La casa negra– no habían aparecido hasta ahora en la editorial) y el libro de ensayos Suspense. Fotografía de la autora © Ruth Bernhard - Trustees of Princeton University

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    Reviews for Deep Water

    3.5/5

    105 ratings7 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Vic is a mild-mannered everyman whose drunk of a wife, Melinda, regularly has affairs and basically flaunts them in his face. All his friends are, naturally, appalled by her behavior and wonder, as we do, why Vic puts up with it. Finally, Vic is pushed too far and on impulse, murders one of his wife's lovers. Melinda publicly accuses Vic of murder, which not very many people believe, and the rest of the novel examines Vic's gradual disintegration.Highsmith once again tackles the theme of the husband pushed too far by an unbearable wife, this time putting the microscope on an ordinary man in an ordinary town and asking the question of what would such a man do when pushed too far. It's an effective character study and suspenseful, even if the reader is pretty sure of what will eventually happen. Yet once again, Highsmith has given us no one much to root for here. It's not that I insist that characters be likable, but it would be nice if I felt like I could at least relate to them. That might make Vic's gradual dissolution more effective and chilling, but he's such an odd duck, with his weird hobbies and general inertness, that being in his head is more like observing an alien species than catching a glimpse of human nature.
    • 5/5
      Excellent !
    • 4/5
      I did enjoy this story. It is a bit dated but that did not detract in any way. The characters are totally unlikeable. The wife almost more so than her husband.
    • 4/5
      Classic Highsmith situation, in which an apparently civilised and sympathetic character turns into a psychopath before our very eyes. Plus snails. Excellently done, and quite chilling.
    • 4/5
      This was the second Patricia Highsmith book that I've read and I loved it up until the ending. Her writing is descriptive yet sparse and she brings her flawed characters to life in an interesting way.
    • 4/5
      Vintage Highsmith. Unlikable couples in a small New England town, stay silent while a toxic couple hate each other. For Highsmith fans, this is a good read.
    • 3/5
      I admit to being torn about Highsmith’s work. While I love her deep insights into human frailty, mostly in the form of what tips a person over into criminal behavior, I am sometimes impatient with her execution. Subtle and slow I don’t mind if there’s enough atmosphere to keep me engaged, like the way Shirley Jackson infuses her psychological tales with unknowns enough to keep the back of my mind churning with suspicion. Not so Ms. Highsmith. At least in what I’ve read so far. Her novels contain a fair amount of inevitability with regard to what can, and usually does, happen. Spoilers ahoy!That’s why it wasn’t exactly a shock to read how Highsmith wrapped up Vic and Melinda’s disintegrating marriage. Really, what else could Vic do but kill her? He couldn’t control her, nor the type of man she took up with (none were up to his high standards for intellect, career or physicality) and so once he’s discovered that killing them off doesn’t bother him, why not go for the source? The moments where Vic shares his worldview about these guys and some of the ways he starts seeing them as less than human are interesting, but in between we get a lot of narrative that, for me, did nothing to move events forward or provide much in the way of character or situation. Maybe that was intentional. To lull the reader into complacency in much the way everyone was in Vic’s life. Either that or they were all on thorazine. Some comparisons have been made between this novel and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and some of them are apt. Both are about troubled marriages and people yoked together, unable to separate as they head for destruction. And as the characters of both spouses are revealed, they got little sympathy from me. They deserved each other, although I think that Vic may have struck at Melinda more directly and still achieved his ends, but that wouldn't have been nearly as horrific as what he really does. As much as you want to sympathize with Vic, and at first you do, considering how Melinda cuckolds him, but then you realize she is a product of his own making. Whatever unhappiness she might have felt at the reality of her life, he did nothing to relieve. She was merely the means to a placid, conventional life; tool and nothing more. When she realizes it, she does nothing to improve her own state either, but embarks on a kind of marital guerrilla warfare, sniping from deep cover and retreating into social acceptance by just barely staying within the lines.