Customer Reviews

The Glass Cell

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm surprised no one else has reviewed this book, so I am going to put up some comments. If you like Patricia Highsmith's work, you're bound to like this one. Though the mystery is a bit flawed--I don't see why she didn't do more with the thumb injury as a murder clue--the writing and the characterization make this well worth reading. Like all her books, it is much more than a simple mystery, but is also the story of a man who starts out believing in some kind of justice and who gradually becomes corrupted. The hero and his prison experience seem so real that I found my own thumbs aching when he was brutaly tortured by the guards. The book was carried off with a great deal of thought and research about prison life. I also found myself feeling for the hero's sense of injustice and found myself hoping it wouldn't ruin him. But with Highsmith that hope is usually in vain. If you liked The Tremor of Forgery or The Blunderer, I'd recommend this one.

I was dissapointed when I discovered that there were no more Ripley books after The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Underwater. The Glass Cell was my first try at P. Highsmiths other books and I was not dissapointed.
Phillip Carter is unjustly accused of fraud and committed to prison for six years. This page turner puts you right in his shoes as he succumbs to drug abuse (in jail) and suffers through his unbearable time any way he can. Unfortunately prison is not rehabilitory but fragmenting even to Phil's secure psyche and the prison events are shocking and unfortunately all too close to experiences I've heard about.
Upon release he does his own investigating and finds out his wife had been having an affair even before his arrest and uncovers other life shattering facts. The story is exciting with never a dull moment, many unexpected events.
Ms. Highsmith does an excellent job of making this story believable right up to the ending which is as tragic and happy as the events of the story will allow.

This time Highsmith's microscope is trained on the mind of a man subtly corrupted by imprisonment and betrayal. The plot is straightforward and there's not a lot of action, but nevertheless you can't put the book down--you feel as if you are living the protagonist's life along with him, and it's a relentlessly grim experience. Highsmith proves you don't need a lot of gratuitous violence and melodrama to mesmerise the reader.

this book was ok but seemed dated in not a good way
i know it was written a while back but some books can still seem current but this one did not
overall though, the story is good

This might be the most realistic prison novel available in fiction. Highsmith captures what it means to have a life taken from someone for no reason and the lasting consequences of such an action. It is a disorienting, deeply disturbing book.

More happens in this novel than most other Highsmith productions. The terrible choices Highsmith characters make! To think that Carter would have anything to do with Gadwill after he, Carter, leaves prison...The pace never falters, start to finish. Gadwill as low-life type (O'Brien too) is a treasure. A delightfully twisted tale, perhaps the most depraved of Highsmith's novel (and my personal favorite).

I purchased this novel about 5 years ago, put on the bookshelf for future reading; but I never came across it again, in my library, until a week ago.

This is consummate Highsmith at her best. Phillip Carter, an Ivy League educated young man around thirty, gets mistakenly pegged for the stealing of funds from his employer. He is sentenced to six years in prison. Highsmith adroitly creates the state prison systems through her description of Carter's tortuous experiences in such a place. His injuries land him in the infirmary, where he is ultimately given the position as a medicine dispenser to other inmates. Through his position, he finds he has free access to morphine, which he begins injecting almost on a daily basis.

Highsmith jumps quickly ahead about a quarter way into the book, to the time of Phillip's release. His supposedly ever-faithful wife has moved to Manhattan, where Phillip tries to adjust to the new world again. He discovers from a fellow ex-con in the Bronx, that Carter's wife has been having a four year affair with a best friend.

I won't go any further and spoil the story. It gets highly suspenseful - so much so that I was up until 2AM one night finishing the book. I highly recommend this novel to any other readers who have read and enjoyed Highsmith's work.

What a pleasent and engaging surprise this book was. This is the 6th non-Ripley Highsmith book that I read and I am surprised it hasn't received the attention it deserves. I have never been a fan of books about life in prison, and that's why I think I enjoyed it even more.

The first half of book is about Phill Carter's life in prison. It mostly deals with his experience during his first years there, but after a while, I was a bit bored because it offered nothing I didn't know already. However, the second half of the book, about his life when he's finally out of prison, is filled with unexpected twists that didn't make me want to put the book down.

As in most of Highsmith books, you need to understand that her books were written in the 50's. At times, some situations seem unlikely to happen but this is only if you judge them from a 21st century point of view. This applies specially to the way the police handle things.

Ya,
I'm Italian and I'm writing my thesis in languages.
I already knew that I could buy on-line English books so I decided to register to this site.
Excellent , I paid and received my book " The Glass Cell " ( Patricia Highsmith ).
So don't worry, this is a serious site where you can purchase whatevr you like.
Ty to the personnel.
Angela