[1] Highsmith replicated the dislocation she used in The Cry of the Owl years earlier, moving her characters from New York City to small-town Pennsylvania.

[7] The story begins in the late 1950s and focuses on Edith Howland, a housewife who, with her journalist husband, Brett, and their 10-year-old son, Cliffie, relocates from New York City to small-town Pennsylvania.

In the diary, she details an imaginary life in which both she and Cliffie achieve grand success and gratification; friendships are more easy-going and she enjoys grandchildren.

When Edith's family doctor brings a psychiatrist friend of his to her home, she is overtaken by fear and paranoia surrounding the possibility of others getting their hands on her diary.

[8] In The New York Times, Jane Larkin Crane wrote: "Edith's Diary takes the form of an old-fashioned psychological chiller, but there is also something stronger, the poignancy of her struggle not to go under.

"[1] Edith's Diary has been described as "one of [Highsmith's] bleakest" novels, that "presents a narrative of a woman's life that offers no redemptive possibilities and is portrayed instead as a slow but unremitting descent into madness".