I stick with what I know and rarely set out to explore new authors without a
word of mouth. I started listening to Francis Fukuyama after a Tim Ferriss
podcast and then moved on to Samuel Huntington. It was in the latter's book "Who
Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity" I read a quote and took
an instant liking to it: "There can be no true friends without true enemies.
Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are..." from "The Dead
Lagoon" by Micheal Dibdin. It was in mid 2022 and I've been reading and
re-reading Dibdin since.
A couple of months ago, I learned in one of Dibdin's interviews that he thought
Patricia Highsmith's characters interesting. So I gave the latter a try. After
some pages, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" lost me and I went on to "The Price of
Salt," a story of a young girl falling in love with a divorcing woman, and was
able to finish it.
The novel didn't engage me as an Aurelio Zen mystery and I failed to appreciate
the love part. There was a gun that, despite of Chekhov, never fired. But I
enjoyed some details. For example, the author wasted no words on the style of
the restaurant the heroine visited before mentioning the pasta and zabaglione
they had. It felt odd at first and then I thought I made a discovery: the place
must serve Italian (and more precisely, Sicilian) because of its name, Palermo.
Good detective work, myself!
As I have the habit of re-visiting (some movies, e.g., have stayed favorite and
regular over decades), who knows, over time, Highsmith may grow on me.
