Synopses & Reviews
A 2010 New York Times Notable BookA 2010 Lambda Literary Award WinnerA 2009 Edgar Award Nominee
A 2009 Agatha Award Nominee
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite “hero-criminal,” the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcocks filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmiths whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. Its a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
Review
"Schenkar has a wonderfully bold approach: not worrying about a linear chronology (although this is meticulously supplied in the appendices), but choosing instead to follow the emotional water course of Highsmith's life, allowing her subject to find her own level — to be tidal, sullen, to flow without check, so that events in one decade naturally make an imaginative tributary into turbulence before and after. Schenkar's writing is witty, sharp and light-handed, a considerable achievement given the immense detail of this biography. Highsmith was a detail junkie. Schenkar's nonlinear organizing method was a brilliant idea to save herself — and the reader — from data overload. This is a biography of clarity and style. A model of its kind." Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"This is no ordinary biography...[Ms. Schenkar] writes with great authority and perverse affection...The Talented Miss Highsmith breaks much ground in connecting Highsmith's diabolical tales with the real women who prompted her strongest passions....In addition to its impressive sweep, this biography also values minutiae. An exacting inventory of the contents of Highsmith's office captures every mundane object, right down to the goats bell and the Wite-Out pencil. Highsmith loved details like that. And Ms. Schenkar shows an uncannily keen grasp of Highsmith's spirit." Janet Maslin, The New York Times
Review
"Throughout nearly 700 pages of lustrous text, Schenkar's prose is as supple and shapely as Highsmith's was flat and functional. The Talented Miss Highsmith is both dazzling and definitive....Its scope and scholarship are unassailable, and its vigor indefatigable. It's a volume as original as its contemptible, miserable, irresistible subject." Daniel Mallory, Los Angeles Times
Review
"Ms. Schenkar provides a vivid, disturbing portrait of a writer whose work — thanks to some virtuosic movie-making — is known more as source material than as literary art in its own right....It is hard to imagine a more thoroughly fact-filled or energetic biography than The Talented Miss Highsmith or one more determined to examine the deepest recesses of its complicated subject." Alexander Theroux, The Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
A 2010 Lambda Literary Award Winner
A 2009 Edgar Award Nominee
A 2009 Agatha Award Nominee
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite “hero-criminal,” the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcocks filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmiths whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. Its a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
Synopsis
Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt is now a major motion picture (Carol) starring Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska, directed by Todd Hayes
A 2010 New York Times Notable Book
A 2010 Lambda Literary Award Winner
A 2009 Edgar Award Nominee
A 2009 Agatha Award Nominee
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite hero-criminal, the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith's whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It's a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself.
Synopsis
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th-century American fiction, had lived a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," Tom Ripley. In this revolutionary biography — a 2010 Lambda Award winner — Schenkar paints a riveting portrait of the author's brilliant career.
About the Author
JOAN SCHENKAR is the author of Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde as well as a collection of plays, Signs of Life: 6 Comedies of Menace. She lives in Paris and Greenwich Village.