Product Description
The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with this work that reveals the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.

The stories collected in Mermaids on the Golf Course are among Highsmith's most mature, psychologically penetrating works. As in the title story, in which a man's brush with death endows his everyday desires with tragic consequences, the warm familiarities of middle-class life become the eerie setting for Highsmith's chilling portrayals of violence, secrecy, and madness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

unremarkable stories by the remarkable Highsmith...
'Mermaids on the Golf Course' is a disparate collection of stories which really lack the notable elements found in Patricia Highsmith's novels, ... particularly suspense and psychological deconstruction of central characters.These short stories are mostly mild character studies of lonely people.However the key short story, entitled 'Mermaids on the Golf Course', is rather clever and bizarre.Not a classic, but certainly memorable.


Bottom line: a collection of uninspired stories.Not recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
Long out of print, this Highsmith classic resurfaces with a vengeance. The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures—"The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude"—who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attesets to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Chilling and hilarious
Patricia Highsmith isn't for everyone, but this slim collection of short tales of women who meet their fates in a variety of ways, many of them disturbing, is quite a wonderful read. It proves that short fiction can be every bit as entertaining as longer forms. These tales glitter like sunlight striking the tip of a very sharp stiletto.

A Slice of Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith is well-known for her vividly shocking tales which center around amoral or unlikeable characters."Little Tales of Misogyny" is an intriguing collection of extremely short stories that showcase the master talent that was Highsmith.In a few pages she is able to create characters who are both real and satirical, events that are both fantastic and ordinary, and dredge up feelings of wonder and unease within the reader.

"Little Tales of Misogyny" is a misleading title since misogyny is certainly not involved in all seventeen of these short stories.What the tales all have in common are male and female characters who are either entirely unlikeable or extremely deplorable.Stand-outs in the collection include "The Breeder", the tale of a wife who keeps reproducing to fulfill her role as wife and mother, and "The Prude" about a woman who is so proud of her virtue that she is shocked when her three daughters might not want to be virtuous young women like she had been.Some stories are disturbing, such as "The Hand" and "The Victim", while others have an odd element of humor in them, such as "Oona , the Jolly Cave Woman".

The fact that Highsmith could create such unique and ordinary characters who can cause laughter and disgust within the reader in just a few short pages is a testament to her talent as a writer.For fans of Highsmith, this unique collection of stories is a real treasure.

More misanthropic than misogynistic
Much of Patricia Highsmith's writing proceeds from one simple idea: that with intense effort and single-minded determination, even the most unremarkable people can manage to ruin not only their own lives, but the lives of everyone around them as well.One need look no further than this slim collection of short fables to make the point.Whether it's "Oona the Jolly Cave Woman," hapless Elaine in "The Breeder," or a truly malevolent creature like Thea in "The Perfect Little Lady," all of the main characters in these short stories display an insatiable appetite for destruction.

Although the title suggests that this book is misogynistic, the men in this collection aren't necessarily any better than the women.Highsmith's deep misanthropy can (and does) get monotonous, but with such gemlike stories as "The Hand" and "The Prude" in this collection, the book gives little cause for complaint.

cuentos extrañose interesantes
Un pequeño libro lleno de historias tremendas, historias de hombres maltratados y de personas con problemas. Es un libro divertido. Quizásrefleje en el fondo la personalidad de la autorao quizás solo lo usa Como artificio literario para atraer lectores, pues bien es sabido que las historias de gente bien y situaciones estables no interesan a nadie, mientras que las historias de vidas y gente torcida atraen las masas. Quizás es para saber que no somos los únicos torcidos o con pequeñas manías en el universo. Ver que la vida de un prójimo real o imaginario es peor que la nuestra nos puede servir de consuelo, tal como sirven de envidia las actrices de novelas que se casan con un príncipe azul. El libro tiene sus meritos de entretención y no hay que quitárselos, es buenoy debe ser disfrutado como tal. Estas historias llevan al lector al universo desconocido de la mentalidad femenina, aunque aun no revela las razones por las cuales las mujeres de estas historias se comportan como lo hacen, nos enseñan patrones que vemos en las mujeres aunque no de manera exagerada hasta el grotesco como en estas historias. La brevedad de las historias y la forma en que están escritas incitan al lector a devorar el libro a no dejarlo escapar, a no dejar de leer la siguiente historia a no soltar el libro hasta su final. estas historias han despertado en mi losviejos hábitos de lectura rápida en la que me veo ensimismado por horas y más horas... Luis Méndez

Entretenido, Retorcido, Bellaco
Un pequeño libro lleno de historias tremendas, historias de hombres maltratados y de personas con problemas. Es un libro divertido. Quizásrefleje en el fondo la personalidad de la autorao quizás solo lo usa Como artificio literario para atraer lectores, pues bien es sabido que las historias de gente bien y situaciones estables no interesan a nadie, mientras que las historias de vidas y gente torcida atraen las masas. Quizás es para saber que no somos los únicos torcidos o con pequeñas manías en el universo. Ver que la vida de un prójimo real o imaginario es peor que la nuestra nos puede servir de consuelo, tal como sirven de envidia las actrices de novelas que se casan con un príncipe azul. El libro tiene sus meritos de entretención y no hay que quitárselos, es buenoy debe ser disfrutado como tal. Luis Méndez ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

classic ripley
This is not the best Ripley story, but it's creepy and fascinating, vintage Highsmith antisocial paranoia.

Tom Ripley In Drag
In "The Boy Who Followed Ripley," the fourth in Patricia Highsmith's five-novel series about Tom Ripley, her engaging hero continues life as a homicidal sociopath still walking free, contented, and dangerous. Frank Pierson, a sixteen-year-old boy from a wealthy family, has run away from the States, read about Tom (His shaky reputation is well-known.), and seeks him out at his villa in France. Frank's father died either by suicide, an accident, or by his son's hand. The two are drawn together by a common bond, rather dubious consciences. Later, Susie an old Pierson servant, intimates that Frank and Tom are cut from the same cloth of evil and malice.
Tom later admits to Frank that he's killed men and had no qualms or despair over it. To him it's a fact of his life. He kills when he feels it's necessary.
If I were Heloise, Ripley's wife, I'd be suspicious of the close relationship between the two males, but Heloise has always been self-absorbed, an enabler for Tom and uncritical of her husband's shady character. She even asks her husband if the boy is gay. She is so into herself that she doesn't seem to care what he's up to.
Tom gets along well with Heloise. He's not that interested in heterosexual relations, and she is not sexually demanding. She's like his beard except he never seems to be involved in sex with males.
Tom becomes Frank's idol, mentor and his doppelganger; he's the young Tom. They become too chummy. Young Frank stays at the Ripley house, travels all over with him. Readers know that Ripley has homosexual tendencies, and they may wonder about this intimate connection. There is always a gay undertone in Ripley's life, and more of it is seen in this book than in Books Two or Three. In Berlin the two visit a gay bar like lovers, Tom even gets in drag; supposedly as a disguise to rescue a kidnapped Frank, but he seems to love it.
Tom in the kidnapping episode does foolish things with the ransom money, and he can put one more notch on his killing belt. (eight so far in the series)
Tom has loyalties to his friends but no moral compass toward humankind in general. Tom is queasy about killing lobsters but not human beings. Tom had never felt guilt about his homicides. He always takes more risks than he should, flirts with danger and discovery.
Tom is always doing a lot of traveling, The trip to Hamburg could have been dropped from the book.

Tom goes back to the States with Frank to accompany him home, strange behavior for a married man of his age. Tom trips a noisy brat on the plane which brings out the meanness in his make-up. Tom wondered about Frank, "The boy adored him. Tom knew that. But love was strange too."
This is not the best book of the series; the plot is diffuse and loose; still it's a very good, exciting book that increases our knowledge of Tom by giving us a mirror image to bring out features of his character.
Never boring her readers, Highsmith always plunges right into the heart of her stories. She can create a feeling in the reader of deep foreboding; something awful is about to happen. She doesn't pull any punches. The reader lives on the edge, in a state of unease and apprehension, feeling afraid of what she's going to have her characters do next.
This book ends in tragedy, but in the fifth volume it doesn't seem to have had any deep impact on Tom.

She Walked on the Wild Side, in LeCarre Country
"The Boy Who Followed Ripley," first published in 1980 by Patricia Highsmith, is fourth in her esteemed five-book Ripley saga, known to its enthusiasts as the Ripliad.Like the others, it's about her anti-hero Tom Ripley, con-man, forger, murderer, moderately-loving husband of a beautiful French heiress, and owner of a pleasant French estate.He's a character she introduced in The Talented Mr. Ripley, whom the larger audience only now has first discovered in Anthony Minghella's recent film, The Talented Mr. Ripley, that starred Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow.I first read the Ripley series many years ago, and had substantially forgotten it; so came to subscribe, as many readers do, to the theory of diminishing returns in regard to it: that is, that as the series went on, it got weaker.That theory is largely true, but I'd be the first to admit that "The Boy," is a much stronger entry than I'd remembered.

It concerns a 15-year old American boy from a plutocratic family, Frank Pierson.The boy is troubled by the recent violent death of his multi-millionaire father, and by unrequited love for a girl named Teresa; so steals his older brother Johnny's passport and takes off for Europe to find Ripley, whom he seems to believe can somehow help him.

And Ripley tries, he really does: he goes to great lengths, literally - Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, New York, and Kennebunkport, Maine-- and metaphorically, to try to help Pierson.I found it particularly noteworthy that Highsmith sets some of the strongest, most interesting suspense in Berlin, where/when the famed wall that separated the city into eastern and western districts still stood.By doing so, she's venturing into her great contemporary, British spymaster John LeCarre's comfort zone, and favorite setting, the German-speaking world, and especially cold war Berlin, that quintessential city of spies, as LeCarre would tell you.Mind you, she's not telling a spy story in Berlin: but certainly a story dependent on misdirection, disguises, kidnapping, and secrets.Highsmith is also telling a story that ventures further into the twilight homosexual world than any other of hers that I've read.If Ripley doesn't love this boy, he's sure awful fond of him.And on the boy's behalf, Ripley is pleased to go, in drag, into one of Berlin's most notorious gay nightclubs, "Hump."

Highsmith was, of course, an American - a Texan--who chose to live in Europe herself.She was a prolific author, who produced a large body of work, suspenseful and unsettling, and during her lifetime was more popular in Europe than her home country.She's best known for her masterwork, Strangers on a Train, and, as filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train (Two-Disc Special Edition); also for the Ripley series.

Step by (Floundering) Step
Patricia Highsmith is the master of unease.She has created a literary character who is almost completely amoral, and twists the readers' sense of justice because we find oursevles rooting for Tom Ripley; we do not want him to get caught in his devious schemes.The same is the case for the fourth book in the series, "The Boy Who Followed Ripley", as Tom once more finds himself caught up in a dangerous affair.

Tom, now married and settled in a small town just south of Paris, is living a somewhat peaceful, idle life.Then one day he encounters a young American boy, who is on the run from a horrible secret, and who looks to Tom out for guidance.Perhaps Tom recognizes something of himself in the boy, for he immediately and almost without question becomes the boy's protector and teacher.When the wealthy young heir is kidnapped right under Tom's nose in Berlin, he takes it upon himself to beat the kidnappers at their game, rushing headfirst and almost unthinkingly into the seemy underbelly of Berlin life.

"The Boy Who Followed Ripley" is as fast-paced as the other novels in the Ripley series, but is rather mundane in its plot.Just as quickly as Tom becomes attached to the boy, he is able to disengage himself from the messiness their association brings him.And while Highsmith is an excellent writer of mystery, offering readers a peek into the sordid world of criminals, this story lacks the polish and tenacity of the other Ripley works.It is a worthy addition, as it shows a more tender side of Tom Ripley, as he finds himself on the losing side for the first time in quite a while, but it is definitely not the strongest in the series.

The weakest in the Ripley series
One day in Villeperce, Tom Ripley is followed by an American teen-aged boy of 16 who calls himself Billy Rollins. He is currently working as a gardener with Madame Jeanne Boutin and claims to have read about Tom Ripley in the newspapers in the States. But Tom soon discovers that the boy is in fact Frank Pierson, the son of an American food magnate from Maine, who detested his father so profoundly that he killed him by pushing his wheelchair over the top of a cliff. Frank's mother Lily sent a private detective to France to look for the missing son...
A weak story line, unbelievable situations, characters who behave in a ridiculous fashion and plenty of clichés about Germany, Berlin and the gay scene are all aspects which contribute to the bad quality of this poorly designed suspense story. Neither "The Boy Who Followed Ripley" nor "Ripley Underground" nor "Ripley Underwater" match the original "The Talented Mr Ripley". Readers would be well advised to enjoy the latter and then forget any novel bearing the name "Ripley".
... Read more

Product Description
Patricia Highsmith, author of classics such as The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Price of Salt, was a lesbian who defied categorization during the postwar period. Her dynamic, often difficult life coupled with her sinister crime stories and upbeat lesbian pulp fiction challenged popular stereotypes about homosexuality as well as women writers. To aspiring young novelist Marijane Meaker, however, Highsmith was more than a role model. During their two-year romance amidst the bohemian set of Greenwich Village and the literary crowd of the Hamptons, the pair navigated the underground lesbian bar scene, lunched with literary stars like Janet Flanner, shared intimacies, gossiped with abandon, and maintained a steady routine of writing and heavy drinking. Written with wit and brassy candor, this is a rare and revealing look at the life and loves of a controversial icon of popular American fiction.Amazon.com Review
Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s begins like a brainy, romantic novel complete with exotic settings, fast-paced dialogue, and a who’s who of the 1950s New York literati. All this should not be surprising given that Marijane Meaker’s tale of her two-year relationship with famed mystery novelist Patricia Highsmith comes from a pen that has crafted more than 40 works of fiction and non-fiction.

Meaker’s touch is light and clear. She backlights her memoir with glimpses of the New York scene of the era: the Mafia-controlled lesbian bars, the rise of Fire Island, the rage for Freudian psychoanalysis. She doesn't attempt a detailed literary biography, nor is the book a complete psychological portrait of Highsmith. But Meaker, a self-proclaimed lover of pseudonymous disguises, does peer beneath Highsmith’s public mask to reveal her constant despair over a disapproving mother, her fascination/obsession with Germany, and her discomfort around intellectuals. This, and Meaker’s persistent jealousy and constant fear that her beloved Pat would leave her to write in Europe slowly edges the narrative into darker territory. Inevitably, the lovers part, as each author kills off the other, albeit in fictional form, with their first post-relationship murder mysteries.

Meaker closes the book by describing her difficult 1992 reunion with Highsmith. Meaker depicts her ex-lover as a hard-drinking, grizzled, chain-smoking, bigoted woman recently returned from Europe and recovering from a bout with lung cancer. Far from the bright beginnings of young love in the 1950s, this segment provides a depth absent from the earlier, more novelistic chapters and provides a glimpse of what a further, more complete biography might have to offer. --Patrick O’Kelley ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

A Writer's Life
Meaker, Marijane. "Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's", Cleis Press, 2003.

A Writer's Story

Amos Lassen


Some of you may recognize the name of Patricia Highsmith as the author of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Strangers on a Train". She is considered to be an important modernist writer and respected by many other authors. Marijane Meaker met Highsmith in a lesbian bar in New York City and the two women began a two year romance which took them to some of the most famous gay American places--Greenwich Village and Fire Island to name just two. They became part of the underground lesbian literary scene and met people like Janet Flanner and other greats; they shared intimacies and were part of the gossip mill. As Highsmith was popular so was she controversial as we read here. The book looks at the literary scene through the eyes of a lesbian and we get an entirely different view than the one that we have received traditionally. This is a fascinating study of lesbian life in the 50's and a peek into the literary world which is beautifully and tenderly written and a treat to read.

Like A Highsmith Novel
Fans of Patricia Highsmith - and anyone who reads her becomes one - will want to read this small memoir of a 1959-61 romance with the author, a well-published novelist herself with a style not unlike that of her former flame. The writing evokes the closeted world of the '50s and early '60s when lesbians had to hide, even inNYC. Highsmith doesn't come off too well, though. A virulent anti-Semite, according to the author, the psychological novelist was a lush who liked to drink for breakfast, chainsmoke her way through the day and generally avoid fans and almost anyone else. You don't quite come away with a good sense of how Highsmith produced her art, despite these quirks. But that's not the point. This is a love story, albeit one inevitably gone awry. You'll want to pick up an unread Patricia Highsmith novel when you're done.

Offers a lot
This was a great read and covered many interests for me; the lifesrtle of two writers, the memoir of two famous writers, a lesbian love story, the aging of two women, and a great nostalgic trip.If these subjects appeal to a reader, then this book will be a feast of a read.The writing style was simple and unflowered, which I appreciated, and I loved the detailes MJ Meaker gives on Highsmith.It seemed very honest.I totally recommend this book to lesbians, writers, Highsmith fans, and any curious in-betweens.

Warts and all
Meaker met Highsmith in the '50's. Both were successful novelists - Highsmith had written the first of the Ripley novels, her Strangers on the Train had been filmed by Hitchcock, while Meaker was just breaking into hardcover. They fell in love. Meaker broke off with her lover to move to rural Pennsylvania (from New York City!) with Highsmith. They had two years together, before Meaker's jealousy (early on a friend had quoted Shakespeare to her as a warning: 'Trifles light as air / Are to the Jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ.") and Highsmith's alcoholism destroyed their relationship. In fact, despite a habit of remaining friends with old lovers, Meaker did not have contact with Highsmith for twenty-seven years after their breakup.

Highsmith seems to have been a terribly insecure woman; she was restless, always wanting to be where she was not, doing her best writing in (and eventually moving permanently to) Europe. The casual racism and anti-Semitism she voiced when Meaker first knew her, while perhaps not so uncommon in the 50's, had grown into a vicious hatred of Jews by the time they reconnected nearly three decades later. She seems to have had a very difficult relationship with her mother, whom she actually stopped speaking to later in life.

Meaker draws a compelling portrait of two writers, and how they tried, without ultimate success, to make a home and lives together. At one point, towards the end, Highsmith accuses Meaker of having imagined who she (H) was and being disappointed that she was someone else. Meaker admits the truth of this. While she has drawn Highsmith warts and all, she doesn't airbrush her own portrait, but gives us an honest account an affair that was likely doomed from the start.

It is also an interesting portrait of urban gay/lesbian life in the 50's, when "you could still be fired for being a homosexual, or lose your lease, your straight friends, your family -- even in a big city like Manhattan, you were safer in the closet." Even Highsmith and Meaker, whose families knew, if they did not accept, their lesbianism, and both of whom had published books about lesbians (Highsmith's The Price of Salt actually had the nerve to have a happy ending), felt guarded, out in the world.

A History and Inside look at a famed lesbian relationship
I liked the historic setting for this book, telling the reader what gay life was like in the late 1950's. Meakers story about her love affair with famed author Highsmith was revealing. Though not sure I would want my relationship written about in a book by an ex, it is still well done. This was a book of non fiction that read like fiction with a history lesson on top of it. It is a wonderful multi dimensional read that should be in everyones library. This is the type of book you will not lend out in fear of not getting it returned. ... Read more

Product Description
Following the national bestseller Selected Stories, this fall brings the republication of a gripping Highsmith classic.

In This Sweet Sickness, David Kelsey has an unyielding conviction that life will turn out all right for him; he just has to fix The Situation: he is in love with a married woman. Obsessed with Annabelle and the life he has imagined for them, David prepares to win her over, whatever it takes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Sickly Sweet
Patricia Highsmith was a gifted novelist who could make the most unlikeable characters come to life and, moreover, make the reader root for her unsavory creations.Tom Ripley, her model of the amoral hero, is definitely the pinnacle of all of Highsmith's characters, but the flavor of what made the Ripley novels so ingenious is missing from "This Sweet Sickness".While David Kelsey, the main character in this novel, shares some characteristics with Highsmith's usual narrators, his focus is obsessively short-sighted and drawn out far too long.

David Kelsey, a gifted scientist stuck in a menial job, is obsessed by the girl who got away - Annabelle.When David took his out of state job to make money to marry the girl of his dreams, the girl of his dreams married another man.But this doesn't stop David from pursuing her.He buys a house in a nearby town, decorating it with items he knows Annabelle will like, and living a double life within his mind on these weekends he spends at his house.For while David is a model citizen to those who share the boarding house he lives in, few are aware of the lies David has told and his increasingly stalker-like behavior of the married Annabelle.When David's letters and phone calls only serve to outrage Annabelle's husband, David finds the idyllic false life he has built up for himself take a murderous turn.Yet he cannot give up the life he has created for the one that is real, no matter how much further into trouble he plunges.

"The Sweet Sickness" is an enjoyable read, but it can be a bit wearisome at times and is perhaps more dated than other Highsmith works.It also seems that the story is overly long, at least by one hundred pages, and maybe would've functioned better as a short story.As it is, events seem repetitive and the reader will find himself wishing that David would come back to reality already.A unique concept but not executed quite as well as other Highsmith novels which have stood the test of time.

Very Good, but much like others by Highsmith.
If you like the Ripley series, this one is very similar, though the oddball chemical engineer obsessed in an unrequited affair is not nearly as sick as Ripley, and in fact may not really be a criminal at all, except for his posing under a fictitious name, another Ripley trait. Set in late 1950's Hudson Valley, NY, with short scenes in Hartford and LaJolla,Ca., one is still amazed at the incredible deviousness which this author specialized in. Also, the slow deterioration of a near genius, very successful young engineer absolutely obsessed by his ex girlfriend, who politely rejects him, but who won't give up his obsessive pursuit. Well worth reading, though maybe not Highsmith at her absolute pathological best.

Interesting Tale of Unrequited Love
David is an engineer in his late twenties, living and working in a small town.During the week he stays in a boarding house, but on the weekends he drives to his house in the country, which he bought under an assumed name.Apparently back in the 50's you didn't need social security numbers or anything like that to get a loan.David is in love with Annabelle, a girl he met two years previously in California, where they both lived. They had a relationship, and Annabelle told him that she loved him.He moved to New York to earn enough money to marry Annabelle, unfortunately, one month later, Annabelle had married someone else (strangely enough, they move to New York, close to David's town).David makes excuses for this action, and doesn't let it deter him from trying to make Annabelle his wife.He writes her letters, which she sometimes answers, because he's sure that some certain phrase or word, which he may not even be aware of himself, will win her over.

After living in this town close to two years, Effie, age 24, moves into the same boarding house and begins making eyes at Dave.Dave also has a friend named Wes, who works at the same place he does.Wes has his own marital difficulties, and tends to drink quite a bit.Both Effie and Wes are a bit too curious about David's weekend trips - they don't buy the sick mother in the nursing home story that he tells everyone.In reality, both of Dave's parents passed away many years ago, and he goes to his weekend house to pretend that he lives there with Annabelle.

What's so great about this Annabelle?Well, she has blue-gray eyes, brown hair, a long face, she used to play the piano, and she told Dave she had an idea for writing a book about a couple of composers.She seems to have married only to get out of the home where she took care of her lazy unemployed brothers, disabled mother, and abusive father.That's Dave's opinion anyway, although Effie is twenty-four, and managed to move out, get a job and her own place, so why did Annabelle have to marry the first loser who came along?Question not answered. But it does make me come to this conclusion: Annabelle has low self-esteem, and at bottom thinks she's not good enough for Dave (what his relatives in CA who know Annabelle keep telling him: Water seeks its own level. But Dave wants to pull Annabelle up, and she doesn't want to rise). Although if Dave had stayed in California in some low-paying job, Annabelle probably would have married him.That's why this story is so aggravating.

In any case, Dave continues with his affair of the mind, contacts Annabelle, sometimes she sees him, leads him on, and he ends up confronting her husband, the wide-hipped, fat-lipped Gerald. Gerald tells him to stop writing his wife.Dave doesn't stop, and Gerald comes to the boarding house to confront him.Big-mouth Effie gives him Dave's address in the country (she and Wes nosily followed him one weekend).Gerald goes, and boy is he sorry.He's accidentally killed, and then Dave is really in a pickle, since he bought the house under a different name.

Dave tries to lie and figure his way out of everything.Overall, he's not really too concerned.Then he drinks too much and makes a big boo-boo.Meantime, Annabelle quickly marries another loser.

The ending of the story is the usual cop-out.But the novel is worth reading for the body of the story. Dave's unrelenting obsession, his single-minded search for his objective, theemotions of the realistic, yet persistent Effie and the infuriatingly noncomittal Annabelle, make the interaction between characters memorable.

One irritating error: at the end of the story both Annabelle and Effie end up 26 years old, although Annabelle should be 24, and Effie, at the most 25.

One of the most pathetic characters I've ever encountered.
Patricia Highsmith's genius always seems to lie in her most pathetic and delusional characters.The most amazing thing to me about this novel is the fact that it is so readable and suspenseful even though the protagonist is completely unsympathetic and a horrible snob.

Although I hated the character he was brilliantly realized and Highsmith evokes the upstate New York setting perfectly.

In some ways Anabelle is just as responsible for the tragic events of the novel as David.Her infuriating passivity and wish y washy personality influence the course of the story just as much if not more than David' obsessive pursuit of her.

This Sweet Sickness is up there with Deep Water and Cry of The Owl as not just the best of Highsmith's work but the most definitive of her views towards marriage and the domestic life which, even though they are misguided and abrasive, are extremely entertaining.

If you are a Highsmith fan you will love this book.If you aren't familiar with her though I would say you should read Strangers On A Train or some of the Ripley novels to get a feel for her style or else you won't really be able to appreciate what she does in this work. It does stand alone as a novel but it is so intense that her other novels might dissapoint you if you read this one first.

An excellent novel
Earlier a reviewer wrote that Highsmith "hated men."This is entirely untrue: If you read her biography by Wilson, which includes excerpts and information from her diary, you will see that in fact she was a huge fan of the male sex and considered males superior in many respects to females.Many of the female characters in her books were problems for her to develop (one example from her diary is Heloise in the Ripley books) because she didn't feel she could identify with them.Very few of her protagonists, consequently, are female.

This Sweet Sickness exhibits first and foremost Highsmith's ability to deal with human emotion and the depth of the human psyche in her literature.The protagonist's desperation throughout the novel is obvious to the reader, although it does not actually fully surface until he starts to slip in the final chapter, and this exemplifies Highsmith's style.The police chase through Central Park is one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever read, and the climax that follows is successfully and powerfully tragic.

This Sweet Sickness is a terrific novel that follows the usual Highsmith "formula" but with a unique, and heartbreaking ending.A recommended read. ... Read more

Product Description
"Highsmith's writing is wicked . . . it puts a spell on you, after which you feel altered, even tainted."—Entertainment Weekly

With Norton's publication of The Black House, Patricia Highsmith's entire body of work is now back in print. First published in 1981, this volume is one of Highsmith's most nuanced and psychologically suspenseful works. The stories in and The Black House mine classic Highsmith terrain as they sketch the lives of suburban dwellers that appear quite normal at first but unravel to reveal their proximity to the macabre. This collection is a perfect example of Highsmith's view of human nature and a fitting capstone to the reintroduction of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Talented Ms. Highsmith.
The Black House is a collection of eleven short stories written by highly acclaimed novelist Patricia Highsmith.All of the stories are good and a number of them are very good.Each story has a skillfully written narrative that unfolds smoothly as well as believable characters notable for their easily recognizable personality types.
Many of the stories contain shocking plot twists designed to demonstrate the darkest aspects of human nature.In some cases these unexpected events are rather disturbing.
Recommended to readers who appreciate "slice of life" stories and are not put off by the prospect of experiencing some viscerally uncomfortable moments along the way.

a tight, competent short story collection by the master..
'The Black House' contains several short stories which are a slight departure from Patricia Highsmith's normal stomping ground - namely, psychotics and murderers.These stories have a somewhat of mild surreal, psychological angle to them.Daily routine life on the exterior becomes distorted when closely examined ... er, or something like that.There is no common underlying theme to the story. They seem to be written over a period of years, published for various periodicals.The publisher decided to, thankfully, give these stories an second life by reissuing them in this book.


Bottom line: enjoyable, disturbing stories for fans of Patricia Highsmith ... and those not acquainted with her works.

This book was not like I thought it would be.
Although this book was interesting, it really didn't have much to do with "horror" or "scariness". There were a few stories that gave me the creeps, but most of them just didn't make much sense. Patricia Highsmith is an excellent author, but her writing takes some getting used to. Basically, I was disappointed in the book. I really thought it was going to be better. I actually got bored with a few of the stories; there's not a lot of action.

A collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmith.
The Black House is a very unique book. You may think it sounds like a horror book. But it is really only scary in the way that people are in this book. It takes a while to become used to the author's style of writing, so you have to be patient. Some of these stories are very strange, be prepared. I found this book to be frusturating because it was so different.The author did a good job leaving you with a question at the end of each story.

If I could rate it 11, I would
Everytime you open a book by Patricia Highsmith, there is no certainty at all about what you will encounter (at least that happens to me). However, this time I found more surprises than usual. Each of the 11 stories has its particular charm, but the one I loved most was "Blow It". It is worth buying the book just to read this story. If you are a woman and you like Highsmith, you cannot afford to leave this one unread. And, remember, reality is more frightening than horror movies! ... Read more

Product Description
Tom Ripley leads a life of luxury at his chateau in Villeperce. He passes his days gardening, practicing the piano, and enjoying the company of his lovely wife. Never mind the blood-stains in the basement. But now he has new neighbors: a vulgar and curious American couple who, Ripley fears, may discover his secrets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

Tom Ripley does it again
This is the fourth and final book in the Tom Ripley series and once again, Highsmith manages to keep the reader fully engaged and sympathetic to Tom Ripley, in spite of his killings, thefts, forgeries, lies, impersonations and dodgy financial dealings.

For readers who have read the three previous books, know rural France and enjoy literary, artistic, botanical and culinary allusions all wrapped in a fanciful, but very well written mystery, this is another pleasurable read.

Highsmith does not moralize or even attempt to explain or excuse her characters' behaviour.Tom Ripley's victims are an odd assortment of people, none of whom are all that evil except perhaps the two mafiosi in book three. So, readers might have reasonably expected Tom's cumuppance and demise in this last book.

However, Highsmith convincingly portrays her central character as an amoral man with almost no conscience or misgivings whatsoever. The reader is effortlessly drawn into Tom Ripley's way of viewing the world and, skillfully, we are even pursuaded to identify with his motives. And the reason for our acceptance is that we have seen such people before...they are all around us, mostly in corporate or public life. And they too get away with all manner of crooked behaviour.

Peter J. Dawes

great book,
as always patricia highsmith's works bring you lot of pleasure reading her pet character mr. ripley. if you love oldies, this is the one for you.

The Fifth and Final Ripley Is Outstanding
In "Ripley Under Water" Patricia Highsmith's fifth and final Tom Ripley novel, a dangerous, nasty, deranged couple, David and Janice Pritchard, have shown up in Tom's placid French village. They are up to no good, digging into Tom's past, the disappearance of Murchison whom Tom had murdered in the wine cellar of his Belle Ombre home. They have been looking into the forgeries of the Derwatt paintings and Ripley's association with the missing Dickie Greenleaf, the man who inadvertently provided Tom with his wealth and life of leisure. It isn't easy being Tom Ripley, a man with at least eight homicides in his past.
Highsmith frequently jumps directly into her narrative and the hero's dilemma--no preambles or wasted time in her forceful, plot and character-driven style. As usual wife Heloise is away (in Morocco) or indifferent to what is transpiring. She knows her husband is a dicey piece of work, but he provides exactly what she needs, window dressing for her frivolous life style. Tom doesn't work for a living, but he certainly works hard to avoid detection.
Pritchard, full of insinuations and threats, follows Tom and his wife to Morocco where Tom gives him a good thrashing. Throughout the book, readers, knowing Tom as a frequent murderer, realize that the Pritchards are skating on very thin ice by pursuing him. Often his solution to such problems has been homicidal rather than societal. He's not the kind of man one fools with. The creepy odd couple, like vultures, quarrel and fight, a couple straight out of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."
Pritchard, a persistent obsessed avenger, gets a boat and a helper and starts methodically dragging in the nearby rivers and canals for Murchison's missing body. Each day he goes out grappling for long hours while Tom is grappling with what to do with this meddler. When a headless corpse turns up, the plot thickens.
This is a perfectly plotted book. Highsmith keeps you wondering how Tom is going to finally deal with the Pritchards, because you know he'll do whatever he has to do to survive.

He's A One Trick Pony
"Ripley Under Water," a crime thriller by Patricia Highsmith, was initially published in 1992.It's fifth and last in her renowned Ripley series, known to fans as the Ripliad that took her more than four decades to write.It continues to recount the deeds of her infamous antihero, the AmericanTom Ripley, a smooth, charming, murderous psychopath, semi-retired to a lovely French villa-- with an equally lovely French wife -- off the proceeds of his many bad deeds.Mind you, you don't necessarily need to read the books in order, but there's some advantage to doing so.

The plot of "Under Water" gives Highsmith an opportunity to extensively revisit two earlier works in the series, The Talented Mr. Ripley; in which he has murdered the rich young Dickie Greenleaf and more or less taken his place; and RIPLEY'S GAME; in which he believes he is forced to take action against a meddlesome American interfering with a profitable art world forgery ring. As the current book opens, Ripley, who has somewhat aged, finds his pleasant life increasingly disrupted by a young, meddlesome American couple, the Pritchards, David and Janice.In addition to demonstrating what Ripley considers to be execrable taste in matters important to him aesthetically, they seem to be taking, inexplicably, far too much interest in him.They seem to know far too much about him and his murderous background; and to be taking -expensive - actions to expose him.Thus begins a sophisticated game of cat and mouse that will play out from London to Tangier, as Ripley will take action against the couple, and the game will inevitably turn rough.

Highsmith, of course, was American herself, a Texan, who chose to live in Europe.She's best known as the author of the superlative thriller,Strangers on a Train, famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, under the same title: Strangers on a Train (Two-Disc Special Edition). Herfirst Ripley book,The Talented Mr. Ripley, recently filmed by Anthony Minghella,The Talented Mr. Ripley, widened her appeal. Her work had previously been best-known and most popular in Europe, but the recent film has reminded a lot of Americans of her large body of work, mainly unsettling chillers.

The book at hand has its virtues, lots of international glamour and travelogue.But, it cannot be denied, Ripley is a one-trick pony, especially by this final book in his series.People get in his way; he finds ways to get rid of them. The book's also rather flat, flagging in invention; we, no more than Ripley, never know what the young couple has against him, how they could know quite so much about his past, nor why they are willing to go to such extreme lengths.Many readers will feel that not everything needs to be backgrounded in a suspense novel, but this reader would have preferred a little more.

Treading Water, Sinking Slowly
"Ripley Under Water" is the fifth book in the Tom Ripley saga, a novel that revisits much of the story from the second book as Highsmith finishes off the Ripley series.Tom Ripley is a completely original creation - an amoral character, almost an anithero, who readers root for as he struggles to keep his criminal pursuits quiet, at any cost.Tom Ripley has so convinced himself of his fabrications, that sometimes he can hardly separate fact from fiction.In this final tale, Ripley must defend himself from a nosy American couple who are intent upon making life miserable for him in their quest to find some evidence that could finally take him down.

Tom Ripley has settled into his quiet luxurious life at Belle Ombre with his wife Heloise, his days punctuated with gardening and harpsichord playing.Suddenly, he receives a prank phone call from someone pretending to be Dickie Greenleaf back from the dead, shaking Tom out of his idyllic life.Soon afterwards, he meets David Pritchard, an obnoxious American who has taken a house in Tom's town, and seems too curious about some events in Tom's past.Ripley soon realizes that he must learn all that Pritchard knows, in an effort to save not only himself, but everyone connected with him who have little or no idea the terrible deeds he has done.

Patricia Highsmith was a gifted writer who created a character for the ages with Tom Ripley.In her five novels that center around him, she has given this 'monster' an emotional depth that makes readers like Tom Ripley against their better judgment.Not all of the novels are outstanding (especially the fourth novel, which was a bit of a let down), but all of them are well-written and tightly packed with suspense.There is always the question in "Ripley Under Water" if Tom will finally get caught, if all his tales will finally tie him up.That is the true joy in reading this Highsmith work. ... Read more

Product Description
Rydal Keener is waiting. Chester McFarland is waiting. Chester's wife is waiting. Two murders later, they're all running--chasing each other across the continent, driven by a bond of hate and fear. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Very fast shipment
This book arrived in great condition in just a few days after ordering. Great service!

It Cries Out for a Good Movie Director
"The Two Faces of January" a psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith, American author who was expert in that genre -- "Strangers On A Train,""The Talented Mr. Ripley --" was published in 1964.It's set largely in Greece, particularly Athens, also Crete, and does an excellent job of giving the reader the look and flavor of that country.It also drops into Paris, and gives the reader a good picture of that city at that time.In fact, as it is set among people we might once have known, who drink and smoke heavily without even thinking about it, it gives the reader a surprisingly accurate picture of its early 1960's era.

The plot concerns one Rydal Keener, young American hanging around Europe, collecting his mail at American Express, hoping something memorable will happen before his money runs out.He trips over it in a top Athens hotel, the King's Palace, where a rich, crooked American businessman, Chester MacFarland, has accidentally killed a Greek policeman come to call on him.Rydal, a graduate of Yale Law School, had issues with his recently-deceased father, a stuffy Harvard professor, and McFarland somehow reminds the young man of his father, whose funeral he had refused to attend, gone bad.The young man gets involved with the older one, and his pretty young wife Colette, helping them to hide the body, get new fake passports, and flee Athens.Rydal never entirely understands why he has chosen to get involved with Chester, though the author makes that pretty clear to us.However, the author leaves us on our own when it comes to figuring out Chester's relationship with Rydal.

"Two Faces" will be a bit dated and dusty for most readers. It really cries out for a good contemporary movie director to blow off the cobwebs and capture the clever plot at its heart.

An absorbing suspense novel
Chester Mc Farland, a clever swindler and defrauder, is travelling in Greece with his wife Colette. They are about to arrive in Athens and settle into The King's Palace.
Another American also present in Athens at the same time is Rydal Keener. He is spending several months in Europe on what money he inherited from his grandmother.
It is when Rydal sees Chester at the Benaki Museum for the first time that his resemblance to Rydal's father's twin brother strikes him. Rydal then decides to keep an eye on Chester. A few days later, Chester gets the unpleasant visit of a Greek police officer who informs him that he is working in co-operation with the American authorities. The latter are apparently more and more interested in Chester's shady past. Realising that he may well be arrested and extradited, Chester hits the policeman who then stumbles and falls, banging his head against the bathtub. A fatal blow. Chester immediately understands that he must hide the body in a small store-room down the corridor. It is at the precise moment when Chester is dragging the corps in the corridor that Rydal appears on the landing and witnesses Chester's act. Will Rydal help or blackmail Chester?
As good as "Strangers on a train" or the Ripley series by the same author.

Great stuff
Patricia Highsmith has an interesting way to tell a crime story. Every time you get tired of reading you'd like to go on because of the tension in the text. I truly can say that this book is one of my favourites. At first you have to get to know a lot of things, but after a certain time they all fit together, like a puzzle. The characters are deeply described, you get to know Chester and Rydal up close and personal. There are two faces of January and two faces of Rydal and Chester.
There is just one thing I didn't like very much: after Colette died things got easily forseenable. I already knew the end of the book before I had read it. But after all I recommend this book. But you will only read it once, because the story is quite simple at the end. Like every crime story this book lives of the tension.

The two parts
The first part of the story was absolutely great. The past of Rydal Keener is an important and interesting fact in the story and it's always behind the story and has a great influence.
The most interesting part is of course the little love story between Rydal and Colette and the reactions of Chester. Chester depends on Rydal, because he does not have any connections in Greece, but he loves his wife too and has to see to it that Rydal does not sleep with her. The tension is that I always wait for a reaction of Chester's and the lack of knowledge about the next step of Colette and Rydal.
When Colette dies, the tension is gone. It's just a normal crime with a bad and a good guy. For me it was a bit unrealistic, nobody would travel with a murderer on the same ship, who hates you and wants to kill you.
The end is not really interesting, the bad guy dies and the good guy has no problems anymore. Rydal escape from his problems too easily.
At last the beginning of the story is absolutely great, but the end is for me a bit unrealistic and it is not so thrilling as the first part of the story.
But I must say that I do not often like the end of books or movies in general. ... Read more

Product Description
With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night.

Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: The Blunderer, first published in 1953 and hailed as her finest novel, about the rise and fall of a faithful suburban husband who plots his wife's demise in fantasies gruesome and eerily serene. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Classic Highsmith
Hey, it's Highsmith. Enough said.

Imagine the mundane becoming psychotic without giving a single warning.

pleasant surprise
I read The Blunderer after reading the better known and more highly regarded Strangers On A Train. To my surprise i found it was thebetter novel.Strangers is more cleverly plotted but it's less "HIGHSMITHIAN".I think it's safe to say that Highsmith went through some changes as a writer and a person between writing her first and third novels.In Strangers Highsmith still identifies with society to a striking degree.Bruno is the villan and he is a creep.Anne and her family are good and admirable.Guy doesn't want to do bad things and wouldn't but for Bruno.In THE BLUNDERER you know very quickly your in another world.The villan of the piece is not the murderer Kimmel.It's the police detective Corby.Corby is a genuinely vile character.That's interesting because Corby is trying to bring a couple of men he thinks are murderers to justice.The good people have disappeared.At first you think the protagonist Walter has tried and true friends and business associates.He has a charming new girlfriend.They all abandon him quite quickly once Corby starts to talk to them.This despite the fact that there is no compelling case against Walter.Some friends!Some girlfriend!In The Blunderer Highsmith has written a remarkably compelling tale of pettiness,cowardice and conformism.Walter does himself no favors by his blundering but it's the nearest and dearest who do him in by perversely empowering the moral cretin Corby.Alas Corby is also the novels weak link.What's a Philladelphia police detective doing in Allentown investigating a suspected suicide?Why is his department allowing him to run all over new york and new jersey to investigate crimes unconnected to philladelhia?Why does the newark police department cooperate with him?This is not plausible and winds up being annoying.Highsmith does have a certain weakness for all powerful detectives that gets the better of her.Had she resisted that here i think The Blunderer would have been one of her best novels.As it is it's quite good.

Thrilling story with a disappointing ending
The story starts right at the beginning with a murder, Kimmel kills his wife near a bus stop on the highway. There's a second case of death, the one of Clara, Walter's wife, is very similar to the first one, but it isn't Walter who has killed his wife. The whole story around it causes a lot of tension through the whole investigation of the inspector called Corby. His suspicion and his in parts wrong accusations increase the tension more and more.
Gradually Walter loses nearly all his friends and the permanent inquiries of Corby make them believe that he has killed his wife.
You then hope the clever (but brutal) inspector Corby will find out the truth about Clara's death - but instead of the Kimmel, the second suspect, kills Walter. So the end does not satisfy me.

Nice plot, but a bit long-winded
The idea with the man imaginary imitating the murderer he reads in the newspaper is quite original. Also his struggle with the police officer who thinks he's guilty is nice. But after a while the book gets a bit boring und predictable. The writer seems to get out of ideas. The end is surprising but not very enlightening and does not grade up the story.

Tight, funny, fast, fresh, and resonant
This is a superbly crafted novel. It gets under your skin, and like a test for allergies, it makes you aware of sensitivities you never knew you had. I couldn't put it down, I often laughed out loud, and was haunted. She makes an improbable situation most probable. In another writer's hand this could've been dreadful. How did she do it? I am not sure. But that is the magic of Highsmith, and she spins her spell wonderfully in this masterpiece. It has an existential power, a nightmarish texture, and the bite of the best dark comedy. ... Read more

Product Description
The Patricia Highsmith renaissance continues with Nothing That Meets the Eye, a brilliant collection of twenty-eight psychologically penetrating stories, a great majority of which are published for the first time in this collection.

This volume spans almost fifty years of Highsmith's career and establishes her as a permanent member of our American literary canon, as attested by recent publication of two of these stories in The New Yorker and Harper's. 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 Capra-like sweetness that forces us to see the author in a new light. From this new collection, a remarkable portrait of the American psyche at mid-century emerges, unforgettably distilled by the inimitable eye of Patricia Highsmith. A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of 2002. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Some gems
There's a reason some of these stories were uncollected. They don't all work, but they are all engagingly written, and most every one attempts something interesting. There are at least five gems: The Mightiest Mornings, The Pianos of the Steinachs, Man's Best Friend, Two Disagreeable Pigeons, and The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn. I'd buy it just for those stories, and there are others nearly as good too.

A fortunate whim
I came across this book at a bookstore's clearance sale and bought it on a whim, for which I was afterwards very grateful. This is a comprehensive collection of lively, varied stories, each one worth reading. Each is a snapshot of reality as insightful as an Edward Hopper painting, delicious for its voyeuristic glimpse into a life, often a life's last moments.

The book is proof positive of Highsmith's abilities in terms of writing from different prespectives, telling stories as a man, a woman, a young person or a middle-aged one, an American or a European. Everyone will have a different favourite here; pressed to choose, I would not agree with the choice of Mr Ingendaay, who wrote the afterword, but rather select one of the very last stories in the book, "Things had gone badly", for its implicit conclusions about how banal everyday obligations can destroy artistic creativity. "A Girl Like Phyl" is another one of the prizewinners here, an insightful reflection on the harm that can be done by letting idealised memories of an unsuccessful relationship become a fallacious yardstick for measuring other relationships. Just a few of the stories are underdeveloped, staying at the level of character sketches, but this is compensated for by the ingenious ideas that gave rise to other stories, such as the collector of counterfeits in "The Great Cardhouse". The only reason why I give this book four stars instead of five is that I felt a bit too many of the stories (I won't say which ones) ended with a suicide which occasionally felt like a Deus ex Machina. Despite that this is a book that you won't be sorry you've bought.

Magnificent!
I am usually not a short story fan, but I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this collection. Highsmith is such a fabulous writer that you are completely drawn into her stories and can't wait to turn the page. Some of her stories in previous collections haven't been my cup of tea. But in this collection, Highsmith shows herself as a writer's writer and gives readers a wonderful gift of perfectly crafted stories that will stay with you long after you close the cover.

Really high on Highsmith
She's baaack! A second anthology of Patricia Highsmith's short fiction, this time featuring stories that have not been published until now.

Unlike the first collection of her short fiction (where many of the stories struck me as mere character sketches) the contents of "Nothing That Meets the Eye" are all fully developed short stories. One of my favorites features the subtle yet obvious menace of a stranger with candy, a very, to paraphrase the story's title, "Nice Sort of Man." The one story that fails to impress in the collection is "The Born Failure." It features a downtrodden, Job-like little man who lurches from one disappointment to the next. The story ends in an oddly sappy upbeat "It's a Wonderful Life" way, as if Highsmith suddenly got bored with cataloguing this character's misfortunes and wanted him off her hands. Interestingly enough, she didn't kill off the Failure. Possibly because for such a loser death might have seemed a kindness.

An added bonus is Paul Ingendaay's biographical essay, which follows the collected short stories. It gives a greater insight into Highsmith's literary process, touches on her lesbianism, and its probable influences on her body of work. (I'd always thought it odd that, in a wild divergence from her more mainstream suspense fiction, Highsmith had written the lesbian-themed novel, The Price of Salt, under the name of Claire Morgan.) Even more intriguing is the fact that Highsmith, apparently a meticulous literary craftsman, left behind a treasure trove of workbooks, notebooks, journals, as well as typescripts of drafts of published and unpublished works. Hopefully one day these literary artifacts will also find their way into print. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of feline mystery fables features Lilian Jackson Braun's clever Siamese, Phut Phat; Edward D. Hoch's sacred cat with cold ruby eyes; and Patricia Highsmith's mysterious feline creature that serves as one couple's conscience. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Forester is a fundamentally decent man who attracts trouble like a magnet, and when he begins watching the domestic simplicity of Jenny's life through her window, the deceptive calm of suburban Pennsylvania is shattered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Another Great One
I love Patricia Highsmith's writing in general.And while I will admit I like some of her works better that others, this one rates pretty high on my list.

I find it especially compelling the way she refuses to take sides, forcing the reader to decide for themselves who the "good guys" are and the "bad guys" are.Her characters don't always get what they deserve.Their lives aren't neat."Villians" (like the sociopathic Nickie) often thrive, while "good" people like Robert sometimes can't seem to win.

What a waste of time!
This book was a huge disappointment.It sounded like it would be a great story but it turned out to be one of the worst books i have ever read.Implausible,unbelievable characters who do unbelievable things,none of it made any sense.And the ending,wow!just when you think it can't get any worse.How anyone can like this rubbish i don't know, but it was a waste of paper and a waste of my time.If you like books to make sense then don't bother with this one.

Too slow
This author's writing is not what I expected. Too slow and the characters are undeveloped. You can not relate to the people the story is about and it leaves you indifferent and bored. I did not have the patience and after 100 pages skipped to the end.

The romance of negative emotions
Jack is married to Betty, and Robert Forrester is their friend.Robert is a voyeur.He believes he doesn't look like a psychopath.He dreams of Brother Death.Subsequently he gets to know his subject.This is all I'll say about the plot since Patricia Highsmith is the master of twisted plots.Setting, atmosphere, serpentine leads are also the tools used by Highsmith to create the suspense and unease inherent in her fiction.Robert, among other things, has impostor syndrome.

Fictions of Patricia Highsmith are fascinating for their grasp of schizoid trends.In the economy of expression the novels seem French in the manner of Georges Simenon.The Highsmith oeuvre is a rich trove for movie scripts.There is more here than just a RIPLEY movie.Missed connections, misunderstandings, creators of psychological terrors and manipulations are present everywhere in the work, creating anxiety, dread, apprehension.

The nervous sensibility resembles that of and captured memorably by Edgar Allan Poe.Poe and Highsmith were thorough-going intellectuals.It is possible in their personal existences in the world they were, characteristically, misunderstood.They were people caught up in their own obsessions and found literary forms to embody them.

Depressing yet fascinating, like Updike on downers.
If you are old enough to remember the early 1960s, this novel will remind you what a grim era it really was in America, when everyone was expected to act according to fairly strict social codes, where conformity was king and where anyone seen as different was distrusted by other people in the town, especially in a small town.

At the heart of this very unsettling novel is the premise that, once people viewed you outside of the bounds ofeveryday "normal" behavior, you were rejected, guilty until proven innocent, and the worst was assumed of you until your own belief in your own sanity or interpretation of reality could be questioned.

This is a book about a couple of emotionally damaged main characters who find each other but whom societal circumstances destroy one way or another.It is vividly if bleakly drawn, and Ms. Highsmith really goes to extremes to show us how these innocent individuals, somewhat "fringe elements" in society because of bad experiences they've had in previous years,are so marginalized by a conforming, unsympathetic microcosm of American society that the integrity of their lives becomes slowly dissolved by harder, meaner people who get all the benefit of the doubt by neighbors, law enforcement officers, co-workers, etc.

It's a depressing book, but excellently written. Ms. Highsmith seems to know just what she wants to do, and she does it relentlessly and suspensefully.I would agree with other reviewers here that the behavior and actions of two of the characters, Nickie and Greg,seem eventually so extreme that it's kind of impossible to accept them as believable characters.But in truth this seems a kind of "fable of the 60s" which places two vulnerable, well-meaning but somewhat damaged people at the center of a maelstrom of injustice and misunderstanding, and seems to want to make us uncomfortable with the society we lived in back then.Along the way are occasional "decent"and well-meaning people, but they never prevail and throughout it seems that good people are subject to a kind of entropy beyond their control.

Fortunately it's no longer the 1960s and America doesn't seem as essentially small-minded, unjust and unfair as so many of the characters in this irritating small town seem to be.There seems to be a real sociological agenda afoot here from the author, a strong attempt to criticize the small-mindedness of Americans circa early 1960s.It's a period piece in that regard, because thank God we don't live in that society any more (not that our current society doesn't have its own problems).I'm sure Ms. Highsmith thought that the gentler characters (like friend Jack Nielsen) were being shown sympathetically, but the lens of time makes everyone look a little bleak, so accurately are they drawn within the moral grimness of the immediate post-McCarthy era in America.This is like an early John Updike novel morphed into a nightmare.

To summarize, it's impossible not to sound contradictory:this is a very difficult novel to get through - it will irritate and depress you.But it's also extremely well-executed and haunting.It's more than the sum of its parts, and it lingers with you, making you look at your own neighbors and your own vulnerability to misunderstanding or injustice in a wary and uncomfortable way. ... Read more

Product Description
Therese first glimpses Carol in the New York department store where she is working as a sales assistant. Carol is choosing a present for her daughter; she looks preoccupied, exuding an aura of elegance as perfect as a secret. Standing there at the counter, Therese suddenly feels wholly innocent - wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese was nineteen, and loved by a young man she cared about, but could not desire. Carol was a sophisticated married woman. Now Therese seemed to have no other purpose to her life other than their meeting First published under a pseudonym in 1952, Carol is a love story told with compelling wit and eroticism, and consummate tenderness. ... Read more

Product Description
With its sinister humor and geniusplotting, Ripley's Game is an enduring portrait of a compulsive, sociopathic Americanantihero.Living on his posh French estate with his elegant heiress wife, Tom Ripley, on the cusp of middleage, is no longer the striving comer of TheTalented Mr. Ripley. Having accruedconsiderable wealth through a long career ofcrime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripleystill finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game. In Ripley's Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith'sclassic chameleon relishes the opportunity tosimultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime—and escape the doldrums of hisidyllic retirement. This third novel inHighsmith's series is one of her mostpsychologically nuanced—particularly memorablefor its dark, absurd humor—and was hailed bycritics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature's most seductive sociopaths,Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Batesand Hannibal Lecter years before theirappearance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

Ripley's Game
Just continuing my exploration of The Ripliad. Will be finishing this one soon, then moving on to the other two remaining books.
Love Patricia Highsmith - also can't wait to read the Beastly Horror book and Little Tales of Misogyny. She was an amazing author.

This item arrived promptly and in great shape, despite having been to 2 correctional facilities! I was fascinated by this!!! Awesome, and I plan to continue to shop from this seller.

Thanks very much, A+++ and highly recommended. (the book and the seller.)

Highsmith's Weakest
What a shame.Such a great writer, such beautiful descriptions and settings, great attention to physical detail.

But this time, a serious flaw causes too many cracks in the story.For the first time, Ripley gets his hands dirty almost as a lark.In this novel the sophisticated psychopath protagonist slips in to contribute to a killing for no discernible reason.Unlike other Ripley murders, there is zero motive for Tom taking part in a certain garrotting that is pivotal to the series of events in the story.

Ripley just ends up looking foolish.

Only a game, definitely.Highsmith stretched the reader's faith a bit too thin for this book to be taken very seriously.

There are a few good moments, most notably a true Highsmith form of contrasting and paralleling thelives and actions of disparate characters.

It's odd, though.Here's a middle aged Ripley set in 1974, smack in the middle of what was arguably the least classy decade last century.Ripley is meant to be a man of class and style.It's as if it was just not the right time to bring him to life in another book.

The Death Count Increases
"Ripley's Game" is the third in Patricia Highsmith's five novel Ripley series. Readers may be reminded of her book "Strangers on a Train" because in that book and movie a stranger gets talked into committing a murder. At the beginning of the book we see Reeves, the shady fence, and Jonathan Trevanny much more than we see Tom Ripley. Ripley has set up Trevanny for Reeves.
Jonathan, a picture framer, is a major character almost eclipsing Ripley. Nearing death from cancer, he agrees to murder in order to provide his wife and son with a future.
Ripley believes in the power of positive thinking, unfortunately with a crooked bent. He always feels justified. It's a very exciting twist to the story when Ripley, pro-active and self-confident, surprisingly shows up on a train to practice his killing skills and to rescue Trevanny from failure.
Highsmith continually demonstrates her ability to create unnerving suspense and shock readers. Reading a lot of Highsmith, you get the impression that Ripley's amorality and dodginess are part of her own cosmic view of life; she's cynical about traditional morality. Ripley operates outside of normal codes of morality, beyond the limits and the norms of "civilized" society.
Ripley is like today's TV anti-hero Dexter who also flaunts the law, kills, and gets away with it. Highsmith liked, probably admired Ripley as a character and sometimes used Tom as her own signature. Ripley, always skating on thin ice, thinks up ridiculous half-baked and half-mad schemes, felonious games.
Highsmith has an eye for homey details which enrich her narrative skill, giving the story a sense of authenticity, ordinariness. Heavy on exposition, she usually tells rather than shows, ignoring the dictum of writing teachers, but she does it so well, it pays off.
Why do people turn to Tom for solutions to their problems when he can't solve his own insoluble messes? Heloise is the ideal wife for Tom, uncritical, amoral, self-absorbed. Glosses over what she is told even though she knows he's dodgy.
The last section of the book really doesn't make much sense, but it's fun. Nothing is ever easy in a Ripley novel. Ripley's only code of morality is survival. To others he is a tainted person, a leper.
Up until this book Ripley has committed three murders and engineered a suicide. He kills five Mafiosa in this book, and goes free to show up in the fourth novel.

Classic stuff
I'm exploring the world of Tom Ripley and enjoying it more and more.In Ripley's Game (1974), Highsmith does it again.Clean controlled language and that great skill of carefully building the plot and then just when you think you know where it is all going, she gives everything a twist that leaves you saying "What happened?"

A Thrifty Writer Who Could Do a Lot with a Little
"Ripley's Game," a thriller initially published by American author Patricia Highsmith in 1974, was third in Highsmith's Ripley series, called by enthusiasts her Ripliad.In it, her charming, ever-so-civilized, murderous psychopath Ripley, now happily settled in a lovely French villa, as a result of his numerous evil deeds, is angered at being snubbed by a hapless Englishman. So our protagonist sets in motion a game that will not have very good consequences for that Englishman, Jonathan Trevanny.

The game, involving Mafiosi as murderous as Ripley, and pan-European train and plane rides, is one that most people - including me--, who know only as much as they read in the papers about the Mafia, would consider impossible ultimately for an individual to win.There are so many more of them, and they are so institutionalized.Trevanny, a man who previously had led a blameless life, is really not equipped for this game.But he is tempted into it by the money, and the fact that he has leukemia, then considered invariably fatal (great strides have been made in its treatment in the last few years, as, ironically, it somewhat resembles AIDS in its workings.)And he has a charming French wife Simone, and child Georges, to provide for when he is gone.The game will change Trevanny, his wife, and even, possibly, his child.And, even Ripley, a bit.

This book, as the other Ripleys, has been favored by European filmmakers, and it's easy to see why.The plot is exciting, and fast-moving; its settings whether cosmopolitan, or rural, are generally lovely. And it stands on its own as a quick, enjoyable read.Dialog is flavorful, narrative writing, muscular.In either case,book or movie, there's less actual gore and violence than you might find in more current similar enterprises: Highsmith was a thrifty writer who could do a lot with a little.
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Product Description
Los Angeles Times Book Review

In unmistakable Highsmithian fashion, Small g, Patricia Highsmith's final novel, opens near a seedy Zurich bar with the brutal murder of Petey Ritter. Unraveling the vagaries of love, sexuality, jealousy, and death, Highsmith weaves a mystery both hilarious and astonishing, a classic fairy tale executed with a characteristic penchant for darkness. Published in paperback for the first time in America, Small g is at once an exorcism of Highsmith's literary demons and a revelatory capstone to a wholly remarkable career. It is a delightfully incantatory work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Compelling read
It doesn't take too long to realize that, for all her usual atmosphere of suspense, this isn't going to turn into much of a thriller but it's precisely in its exploration of the interactions between gays and straights, young and old, marginal and established centering around a small neighborhood cafe, that Highsmith creates something perhaps even more gripping and if fear makes for good suspense so, too, does human longing.

Mixed Feelings Overall!
I got this book which was in perfect condition from a public library. Only checked out once, I heard about Patricia Highsmith from the Ripley tales. I have never read those books neither. Maybe it prepares me to better like this book which is not about Ripley but a contemporary portrait of gay life in urban Switzerland. I don't know because I'm not gay myself. I do support gay rights though. What bothers me is that this book sets the straight women for a fall from the very beginning. As a heterosexual female, the last thing I want to do is fall in love with a male homosexual because it would be doomed and I would be the one with all the heartbreak. Of course, I think gay men are far better off than straight women in this world but that's another story. I think Highsmith tries to engage all readers regardless of their sexual orientation under the umbrella at Jacob's. We don't really care who murdered Petey but it's Rick we learn about. Of course, it doesn't help that Rick is HIV positive and I am glad the author pursues the subject tactfully without morbidly obsessive. Petey's murder is a weak storyline to center it around because it just is nothing more than robbery gone bad at least that is what the author wants us to think. I don't care for the female characters like Luisa and Renata and especially Dorrie Wyss who I find irritating. What I am trying to say is that even today, I think people of any sexual orientation is looking for the wrong thing. Rick seems interested in finding another partner to replace his loss but he has his dancing dog, Lulu. I don't know if the author uses Lulu as sort of a literary device. The way childless people like myself have personified our animals into our surrogate children. I know this was her last book with us. I don't think the author ever found happiness anywhere on this earth. Maybe in heaven, she is found peace and the love that she was trying to find that eluded her here too. REst in peace, Patricia!

I'd GiveThis Novel a B-
Patricia Highsmith's last work, SMALL g, A SUMMER IDYLL, gets its title from Jakob's, a Zurich bar, that would have a small "g" written after it in guidebooks to indicate that it attracts a sometimes gay crowd. This novel thus has a clever title and begins with a young man Peter Ritter getting stabbed as he came out of a cinema on a cold January night-- a good beginning. A lot of the action takes place in or about Jakob's with a rather motley group of characters frequenting that establishment. Rickie, who had been in love with Peter; Luisa, a young woman who was also in love with him. She works for the club-footed Renate, who is homophobic beyond words. We suspect right away what her problem is. Then there is Teddie, who is gorgeous and straight, who gets mugged because he is perceived as being gay, Rickie's trick dog Lulu; Willi, the village simpleton; and one of my favorite characters, the decent Freddie, a married police office whom Rickie sleeps with from time to time.

The story, after a good beginning, does not always proceed as well as it started. Renate is so one-sided that she lacks credibility although she partially redeems herself in the end of the novel in a predictable way. I do not believe there is such a disease as "Kaposi's Syndrome" but Ms. Highsmith can be forgiven for that lapse since Homer himself "nodded." On the other hand, Rickie is a sympathetic character, as is Luisa and others. Her [Luisa's] definition of first love is worth remembering: "It hadn't mattered that Petey hadn't been in love with her. She had felt outside herself, like a person everyone on the street might look at twice--through people hadn't. She had been happy, and she wondered if that feeling would ever come again." The reader wants to assure her that she may never have that exact feeling again, but that, yes, she will love again.

Thought born in Fort Worth, Texas, Ms. Highsmith spent most of her life abroad, giving a sophisticated international flavor to her novels, something I find most appealing. Although these characters are no Tom Ripleys, many of them will pique your interest, making this author's last novel worth the precious time you spend reading it.

Make No Mistake
If you expect this to be a mystery/suspense novel in the line of Highsmith's other work, you may be disappointed.This is a slice of life in gay Zurich in the 80's, albeit a slice with perhaps more crime and death than most.If you wish to enjoy a novel whose main strengths are atmosphere and a series of sharply-drawn incidents, and you are prepared to overlook weaknesses that consist of a few unconvincing characterizations and an abrupt deus-ex-machina 'climax', try this.

Something is going to happen soon, right?!?
Okay, so I normally read fantasy novels, but I wanted a change of pace so I picked up this murder/mystery summer love story on a whim from a "new in paperback" shelf of the bookstore.

The first chapter is very exciting.Someone dies (I am not spoiling anything because this is written on the back cover)

From there a whole lot of nothing happens.The ENTIRE 310 page story is revolved around someone getting something thrown at them.They were not even injured enough to go to the hospital.You tire very quickly of hearing about this injury.Another main plot is about an overbearing housemate, which gets equally tiring, but not to the same degree.

In the end I was hoping to at least have the (yawn) questions that were brought up to be answered, but I was SO very wrong.Everything is left to the imagination.Not exciting!

Now, don't get me wrong, it was not so bad that I had to stop reading, I just kept hoping SOMETHING would happen and it never did.It should be called "Small g: Summer Idle" vs. "Small g: Summer Idyll"

Not worth the read.
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SPOILERS ALERT BELOW!!!!

Also, I did not realize when I picked this book up that it was a gay/lesbian title.Not that I'm opposed to that by any means, but.... AIDS is brought up several times in the book and one patient is told that he has AIDS for one half of the book and then his doctor says "just kidding" I wanted to teach you a lesson, you do not have it!!! WHAT!#R%$It's just ridiculous!

Another major problem that I have with this title, the one "villan" in the book is killed off randomly to leave you without a climax to the story.Absolutely nothing is resolved.
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Product Description
Set in Mexico, this is a coolly analytic study of friendship, neurosis, and grief as two good friends share the affections of one woman--and the pain, confusion and suspicion of her murder. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Not Highsmith's best - but a good read
It seemed that Highsmith was interested in exploring the psychology of the two main characters -- Theodore and Ramon -- and their unlikely relationship.To do so, Highsmith packaged a murder mystery around the two.As a result, something is lost both in the mystery and the exploration of the characters.

The two men are vastly different.Teo is a wealthy German, reserved, cool, an artist.Ramon is a poor Mexican workingman, fiery, tempramental, a devout Catholic, a furniture mender.And they happened to share the same woman, who has been brutally murdered.

Told from Teo's point of view, the bulk of the book grapples with Teo's suspicion of Ramon as the killer and his efforts to understand his friend's mental state, which is, at best, somewhat shaky.They travel through Mexico together, trying to chase down suspects of the crime.

But ultimately the book fails to deliver.It never attains the level of tension that Highsmith usually brings to her books with austere prose and the exploration into the psychology of brutally flawed protagonists.

But, still, it's better than 95% of the mysteries out there.It's not a great place to start with Highsmith, but it's a interesting if not enthralling ride on the Patricia-train...

a weak effort by The Talented Ms. Highsmith
Patricia ("The Talented Mr. Ripley") Highsmith has written many wonderful psychological thrillers.After having enjoyed many of these I had high expectations of 'A Game for the Living'.Sadly, I was disappointed.

Unlike Highsmith's successful formula of writing tense thrillers about accused murders undergoing extreme apprehension about being caught, 'A Game for the Living' is a simple whodunnit-type murder mystery.It involves the murder of a "loose" young Mexican woman, and the friendship of her two lovers as they try to locate the killer.I found the story to be banal, with no suspense build up.It is hard to imagine this book was written by Highsmith.

Bottom line: skip this book, buy one of Highsmith's (much) better works such as 'The Blunderer', 'Strangers on a Train', and 'This Sweet Sickness' (..to name a few).

A sharp work of mystery
I tend to go for the harder edge of mystery and noir (Andrew Vachss, Chester Himes, etc.), but whenever I can afford it, I buy a new Highsmith novel.Why?Because she creates believeable characters and absorbing settings, and her books are more than just the mystery that's a segment (sometimes, as in this case, a small one) of the plot. Unlike the chilling "Cry Of The Owl", this novel is more about Theodore and Ramon than it is about the murder that it opens with.This isn't a wild ride, edge-of-your-seat book.Instead it lures you in by making you care about the characters. Highsmith seems almost to forget about the murder, in fact, and explores these two men, and their relationship, at some depth.The mystery is paid attention to...but the novel ends on a note that implies maybe it isn't as neat as the characters think. If you're looking for an out-and-out mystery, or a suspense thriller, "The Cry Of The Owl", an equally good book, is probably more for you.But if you like psychodrama, definitely pick up "A Game For The Living."

She's done better
I devoured all Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley" books with the appetite of an ice-cream addict, but haven't found some of her others to be as satisfying.Highsmith seems to have certain themes that carry through most of her work:rich expatriates enjoying high living, artists and the art community, and wary, suspicious friendships between men.All these elements are found in A Game For the Living, which is set in Mexico.There's a gruesome murder (of course) and a lot of searching, mysterious clues, false leads, etc.Still, the book seemed in part to be a mere Mexican travelogue, as though Highsmith had made a trip to Mexico City and Acapulco and then put plenty of street names into her book just to prove she'd been there.Especially near the end of the book, the exact descriptions of the two main characters' moves in Acapulco are just too thorough and boring to make literary sense.At times you may wonder why the characters are putting themselves in so much danger, with the blessing of the police - it's unrealistic.Still, if you enjoy being taken into the fearsome, yet fascinating world of Highsmith's imagination, you'll get there through this book.It's just that you'll spend part of your trip on a dull tour bus.

Another winner from this little-known genius
Yep -- it's another fine piece of work from Patricia Highsmith, who was, I'm becoming increasingly convinced, one of the 20th century's mostaccomplished and important writers.I wonder how long it will take folksto figure this out (and to start putting many of her long-lost books backin print) -- esp. since she is cleverly disguised as a suspense/thrillerwriter (and she is a darned good one); but she's equally interested inexploring the complexities of modern life, with its alienation, widespreadatheism, and deliberate cruelty."A Game for the Living" issomething of a whodunit, but also a beautifully realized tour of Mexico atmid-century, plus a flawless character study of two men who are polaropposites, one of whom commits himself to friendship with the other,despite the distinct possibility that the other man murdered the girl theyboth loved.It's a deeply moving portrait of friendship, and another greatread from Miss Highsmith's collection. ... Read more

Product Description
En El talento de Mr. Ripley, la mas celebre novela de Patricia Highsmith, aparece su mas fascinante personaje: el inquietante y amoral Tom Ripley, figura prototipica de un genero que Patricia Highsmith ha inventado, que se situa entre la novela policiaca y la novela negra, entre Graham Greene y Raymond Chandler, donde el mas trepidante suspense se auna a un vertiginoso analisis psicologico. Mr. Greenleaf, un millonario americano, le pide a Tom Ripley que intente convencer a su hijo Dickie que esta viviendo una bohemia dorada en Italia para que regrese al hogar. Tom acepta el encargo, y de paso pone tierra por medio a posibles problemas policiales, y encuentra a Dickie y a su amiga Marge, con quienes establece una turbia y compleja relacion. ... Read more