THE CRY OF THE OWL (Patricia Highsmith) - November 24/10

What an absolute mess of a book. The first half is kind of readable, once you overlook the inherently ludicrous nature of the premise. (A woman falls in love with her peeping tom? Really?) But the book just gets worse and worse as it goes along, as Highsmith seems to have no idea where to take the story and just makes things up as she goes along. Having the woman commit suicide is disastrous, as it results in about 100 pages of interminable pointlessness. (Who cares about Robert's efforts at proving his innocence? We know he's innocent, so it's all just so meaningless.) Ugh, what an ordeal. * out of ****