Edith's Diary is a psychological novel

Psychological novel

A psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...

 by Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...

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Synopsis

When Edith Howland's husband abandons her for a younger woman, leaving her with their alcoholic son and his senile uncle, she begins recording details of an imaginary, much more successful life where she has friends and grandchildren. However, this diversion soon grows unhealthy when she becomes slowly convinced that the fantasies are real…

Reception

• With Edith's Diary, Highsmith has produced a masterpiece. - The Times Literary Supplement
  The Times Literary Supplement
  The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
  
  

• Miss Highsmith is a writer of intense subtlety... She probes to the very core of her heroine with a controlled ferocity and single-mindedness that illuminates every page of the novel. It is a masterly book, a haunting book, a book that lingers long in the memory and constantly disturbs and delights... - The Times
  The Times
  The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
  
  

• Her strongest, her most imaginative, and by far her most substantial novel. - The New Yorker
  The New Yorker
  The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
  
  

• Edith's Diary takes the form of an old-fashioned psychological chiller, but there is also something stronger, the poignancy of her struggle not to go under. She is betrayed by such ordinary dreams. - The New York Times Book Review
  The New York Times Book Review
  The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
  
  

Adaptation

Edith's Diary was adapted into the German film Ediths Tagebuch (1983), directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer and starring Angela Winkler

Angela Winkler

Angela Winkler is a German actress.- Biography :Born in Templin, Winkler trained to be a medical technologist in Stuttgart. Interested in theater, she went to Munich, where she took acting classes with Ernst Fritz Fürbringer...

as Edith.