The Tremor of Forgery

When you start a novel with Patricia Highsmith's name on the cover, you have certain expectations: betrayal, desire (often same-sex desire), consequence. The most striking thing about this novel, about an American writer who goes to Tunisia to work on a small movie set there, is how most of these elements are withheld. For the most part, nothing happens, and then something does, but what of it? You hardly know what to think (Ingram, the writer, certainly doesn't), and Highsmith isn't going to help you (or him) out. Somehow, though, the stark abstraction of this story of a man far from home in a poor desert country made it oddly compelling, and it remains vivid in my mind as few novels I've read lately have.