The Black House

Devoured this book in one day. My favourite stories, which I still think about every once in a while, were “Not One of Us,” “The Terrors of Basket-Weaving,” and “Old Folks at Home.” Mostly I appreciated how alien such a social circle as the one in the first story is to me, identified with the creepy feeling of knowing something you didn't think you knew in the second, and got to feel self-righteous about not having kids in the last. I hadn't read any Highsmith before (just seen the Hitchcock movies, pretty much all of which, contrary to my nature, I saw before reading the book), but I will seek out her more famous works for sure.

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‰ЫПDiane felt that she had lost herself. Since repairing that basked, she wasn‰ЫЄt any longer Diane Clarke, not completely, anyway. Neither was she anybody else, of course. It wasn‰ЫЄt that she felt she had assumed the identity, even partially, of some remote ancestor. How remote, anyway? No. She felt rather that she was living with a great many people from the past, that they were in her brain or mind (Diane did not believe in a soul, and found the idea of a collective unconscious too vague to be of importance), and that people from human antecedents were bound up with her, influencing her, controlling her every bit as much as, up to now, she had been controlling herself.‰Ыќ (From ‰ЫПThe Terrors of Basket-Weaving‰Ыќ)