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Nothing that Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith: A Virago Modern Classic
Patricia Highsmith
Virago Modern Classics, Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Crime & mystery, Thriller / suspense, Short stories
A fantastic collection of twenty-eight stories spanning almost fifty years of Highsmith's career
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.
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.
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year, she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.
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