BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
‘Highsmith’s dark humour oozes through this new collection like a particularly delicious poison’ ANDREW WILSON, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘This collection showcases the almost ventriloquistic powers of a dazzling writer over nearly half a century . . . Highsmith is addictively brilliant’ JOANNA BRISCOE, GUARDIAN
‘Highsmith ratchets up a furtive sense of foreboding and dread . . . This collection reminds us how skilled she was’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
This volume of stories spans almost fifty years of Highsmith’s career, allowing us to see how she evolved from a struggling freelance writer in New York to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. They reveal her trademark dark themes, such as the married man who dates women out of secret revenge against their sex and the suicidal woman who finds that in her despair she is a sexual magnet.
The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo-like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster’s fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light.
These are suspenseful, playful, taut and psychologically gripping stories – evidence of an extraordinary talent.
‘Highsmith’s dark humour oozes through this new collection like a particularly delicious poison’ ANDREW WILSON, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘This collection showcases the almost ventriloquistic powers of a dazzling writer over nearly half a century . . . Highsmith is addictively brilliant’ JOANNA BRISCOE, GUARDIAN
‘Highsmith ratchets up a furtive sense of foreboding and dread . . . This collection reminds us how skilled she was’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
This volume of stories spans almost fifty years of Highsmith’s career, allowing us to see how she evolved from a struggling freelance writer in New York to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. They reveal her trademark dark themes, such as the married man who dates women out of secret revenge against their sex and the suicidal woman who finds that in her despair she is a sexual magnet.
The stories assembled in Nothing That Meets the Eye, written between 1938 and 1982, are vintage Highsmith: a gigolo-like psychopath preys on unfulfilled career women; a lonely spinster’s fragile hold on reality is tethered to the bottle; an estranged postal worker invents homicidal fantasies about his coworkers. While some stories anticipate the diabolical narratives of the Ripley novels, others possess a sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light.
These are suspenseful, playful, taut and psychologically gripping stories – evidence of an extraordinary talent.
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Reviews
These tales should not be glanced at by those with even the slightest history of poor mental health . . . Highsmith's dark humour oozes through this new collection like a particularly delicious poison
One of her classic themes is of the twisted lurking beneath the surface . . . The sinister and the beautiful, the warm and the cold are superbly interwoven
This collection showcases the almost ventriloquistic powers of a dazzling writer over nearly half a century . . . Highsmith is addictively brilliant
Highsmith is no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre . . . than are Doestoevsky, Faulkner and Camus
A magnificent new volume by the doyenne of upmarket suspense writing . . . Highsmith ratchets up a furtive sense of foreboding and dread . . . This collection reminds us how skilled she was
Following on the heels of The Collected Stories of Patricia Highsmith (2001), this gathering will be a revelation to readers who've bracketed Highsmith (1921-95) purely as a psychological suspense novelist, or indeed as a novelist
