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Author
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Country
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United States
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Language
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English
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Genre
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Psychological thriller, novel
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Publisher
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Publication date
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1962
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The Cry of the Owl is a
psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, the eighth of her 22 novels.
It was first published in the US in 1962 by Harper
& Row and in the UK by Heinemann the following year. It explores, in
the phrase of critic Brigid Brophy, “the psychology of the self-selected
victim”.[1]
Contents
Composition
Highsmith wrote The Cry of
the Owl between April 1961 and February 1962. She considered it to be one
of her weaker efforts, calling its principal character “rather square ... a
polite sitting duck for more evil characters, and a passive bore”.[2]
Highsmith drew on her own experience as a stalker, when obsessed years
before with a woman she had waited on in a New York City store, events she adapted
when writing The Price of Salt (1952).[3]
The setting was much like the area in which she was living in New Hope, Pennsylvania.[2]
The book’s title refers to
Jenny’s belief that foreboding incidents precede events in her life, which are
determined by fate. She considers the owl a harbinger of death. As a man
appeared before her younger brother’s death years ago, so Robert’s appearance
foretells a death.
Highsmith ended her
relationship with Marijane Meaker about the time she started work on
this novel in April 1961.[2]
Meaker told an interviewer that Highsmith modeled the character of Nickie after
her as an act of “retaliation”.[4]
The novel is dedicated only to “D.W.”, an apparent reference to Dasiy
Winston, Highsmith’s former lover and neighbor in New Hope.[5]
Plot summary
Following a painful divorce
from his wife Nickie, Robert Forester leaves New York and moves to a Langley,
Pennsylvania, a small town, where he develops an obsession for 23-year-old
Jenny Thierolf. He spies on her through her kitchen window, enjoying “the girl’s
placid temperament, her obvious affection for her rather ramshackle house, her
contentment with her life”. He is surprised when she invites him into
her house after spotting him one night. Each seems to represent something more
for the other than it appears, to embody a larger emotional force than a mere
personality. Robert explains to his therapist: “‘I have the definite feeling if
everybody in the world didn’t keep watching to see what everybody else did, we’d
all go berserk. Left on their own, people wouldn’t know how to live.’”
Jenny sees their chance meeting
as an act of fate and breaks off her engagement to hot-tempered Greg Wyncoop,
who is resentful and begins spying on the pair to learn more about Robert so as
to find a way to get even with him. Greg picks up
information from Robert’s former wife as well and she encourages him to find a
way to punish her ex-husband. During the next weeks, Jenny pursues
Robert, contacting him at his home and at his job at Langley Aeronautics.
Robert is offered a promotion at work that requires him to relocate to another
city, and he hopes this will put an end to Jenny’s advances, which are making
him increasingly uneasy.
One night, Greg starts a fight
with Robert that ends when Robert knocks Greg unconscious and leaves him on a
river bank. When Greg is reported missing, the police suspect Robert has
murdered him, though Robert in fact was the victim of Greg’s attack and had
last seen Greg alive. The police have their suspicions about Robert confirmed
when Robert’s former wife Nickie tells them that Robert once threatened her
with a weapon. After a newspaper publishes an article about the case, Robert’s
promotion is withdrawn. A badly decomposed body is found in the river
and the police suspect it is Greg’s, but the identification proves difficult. Jenny
quickly decides that Robert has murdered her former fiancé, that Robert’s
appearance presages death and commits suicide.
Nickie’s new husband Ralph Jurgen informs
Robert that Greg is alive, that Greg and Nickie have staged Greg’s
disappearance in order to frame Robert. Greg takes a shot at Robert and
accidentally wounds a bystander. The police arrest Greg but release him. In a
final confrontation between Robert, Greg and Nickie, Greg tries to knife Robert
and accidentally kills Nickie. Robert is again the object of the police
investigation. [“Don’t touch it,” he thought, “don’t touch it.”]
Reception
In the New
York Times, Thomas Lask wrote that “Miss Highsmith starts in low gear
and the first fourth of the book marks time as she goes through some
preliminary passes. Her characters are only puppets. But once it starts rolling
the tale accelerates rapidly, dangers and suspense pile up and the reader goes
along very willingly to the conclusion. And a gory one it is, too.”[6]
In 1967, British writer and
critic Brigid Brophy stated that, of the novels written in
the last twenty years, five or six stood out, including Highsmith’s The Cry
of the Owl and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.[1]
Film, TV or theatrical
adaptations
Highsmith’s
novel was the premise for the French film Le Cri du hibou (1987) directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Mathilda May.[7]
Also in 1987, German
writer-director Tom Toelle directed an adaption
for German television titled Der Schrei der
Eule.[8]
A third film adaptation written and
directed by Jamie Thraves and starring Julia
Stiles and Paddy Considine was released in 2009.[9]
German director Wim
Wenders sought to buy the rights for a screen adaption in the 1970s, but
finding the rights unavailable chose to make Highsmith’s Ripley’s
Game into the film Der Amerikanische Freund.[2]
References
1.
Brigid Brophy, Don’t Never Forget (Holt
Rinehard & Winston, 1967),[page needed]
2.
Andrew Wilson: Beautiful Shadow – A Life of
Patricia Highsmith, Bloomsbury, 2003,[page needed]
3.
Schenkar, Joan (2009). The
Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith.
St. Martin’s Press. p. 274. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
4.
de Bertodano, Helena (June 16, 2003). “A
passion that turned to poison”. The Telegraph. Retrieved December 8, 2011.
5.
Schenkar, Joan (2009). The
Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith.
St. Martin’s Press. p. 425. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
6.
Lask, Thomas (August 17, 1962). “Books
of the Times”. New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
7.
Canby, Vincent (October 16, 1991). “The
Cry of the Owl (1987)”. New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
8.
“Fernsehen Sonntag,
13. 12.”. Der Spiegel (in German). July 12, 1987. Retrieved December 7,
2015.
9.
“The
Cry of the Owl (2009)”. New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
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