Edith's Diary: A Virago Modern Classic 712 (VMC)

INTRODUCED BY DENISE MINA

'Highsmith probes to the very core of her heroine with a controlled ferocity and single-mindedness that illuminates every page of her novel. It is a masterly book, a haunting book, a book that lingers long in the memory and constantly disturbs and delights' The Times

'A work of extraordinary force and feeling . . . her strongest, her most imaginative and by far her most substantial novel' New Yorker

Edith Howland's diary is her most precious possession, and as she is moving house she is making sure it's safe. A suburban housewife in fifties America, she is moving to Brunswick with her husband Brett and her beloved son, Cliffie, to start a new life for them all. She is optimistic, but most of all she has high hopes for her new venture with Brett, a local newspaper, the Brunswick Corner Bugle.

Life seems full of promise, and indeed, to read her diary, filled with her most intimate feelings and revelations, you would never think otherwise. Strange, then, that reality is so dangerously different . . .

'Edith's Diary is certainly one of the saddest novels I ever read, but it is also one of the mere twenty or so that I would say were perfect, unimprovable masterpieces' A. N. Wilson, Telegraph