Eleven

by Patricia Highsmith, Graham Greene (Foreword by)

Overview

Short stories of suspense by the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley—“a brilliant collection” with a foreword by Graham Greene (The Sunday Times).

Master of tension Patricia Highsmith is best known for her novels of ever-increasing suspense, but she is equally adept at the short story, where “she is after the quick kill rather than the slow encirclement of the reader.” Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories—dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability (Graham Greene, from the foreword).

In these pages, naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies; simple cases of murder turn out to be something even more sinister, and the cruelties of childhood come to unsettling life. This is a captivating, important collection from “one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802145307
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	07/12/2011
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Date of Birth:

January 19, 1921

Date of Death:

February 4, 1995

Place of Birth:

Fort Worth, Texas

Place of Death:

Locarno, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., Barnard College, 1942

Table of Contents

Foreword Graham Greene ix

Stories Patricia Highsmith: The Snail-Watcher 1

The Birds Poised to Fly 11

The Terrapin 26

When the Fleet was in at Mobile 44

The Quest for Blank Claveringi 68

The Cries of Love 87

Among thy Green Braes Afton 98

The Heroine 113

Another Bridge to Cross 133

The Barbarians 156

The Empty Birdhouse 173

Editorial Reviews

What is striking about these stories is their integrity: they are all of a piece; they grow, with that tensed-spring inevitability of the unfolding rose observed by elapsed-time photography; together they are a brilliant collection.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“The mood of nagging apprehension is consistent, skillfully underplayed so that just the right amount of chill is induced with an economy of means.” —J. R. Frankes, The New York Times Book Review

“Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. . . . In her short stories Highsmith naturally has to adopt a different method. She is after the quick kill rather than the slow encirclement of the reader, and how admirably and with what field-craft she hunts us down.” —Graham Greene

“Highsmith’s genius is in presenting fantasy’s paradox: successes are not what they seem . . . Where in the traditional fairy tale the heroine turns the toad into a prince, in Highsmith’s fable the prince becomes a toad—success is nearly always fatal. . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction—a reflection—the stories are fabulous, in all senses of that word.” —Paul Theroux

“One of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the 20th century.” —Otto Penzler

"She’s sui generis, a writer of almost occult power.”—Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher