Eleven
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.54 (941 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B0055UQEHS |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 397 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-09-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A mixed bag. This is a collection of 11 Patricia Highsmith stories written over a 25 year period. The stories originally appeared in a diverse sampling of publications running the gamut from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine to Harper's Bazaar. The best story in this collection is "Mrs. Afton, among Thy Green Braes" and the second best is probably "The Empty Birdhouse".Potential readers should be aware that two of the stories, "The Snail-Watcher" and "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", are about snails (a long time Highsmith obsession) and would be better suited for inclusi. Even my mom likes it! I must confess at the start that this is not a totally objective review as this book will always be special to me in that it was the first book I have even managed to get my mother to enjoy! I cannot express how happy that makes me because my mother never reads, and as reading has always been my largest pleasure in life, there has always been that gap between us. But imagine my delight (and her delight) when she actually read a story that fascinated her, the first story in Eleven, about the man who kept snails as pets. In my mother's words, she enjoyed the . A Customer said most of the stories deserved a five star rating. A couple of so-so stories in this collection, but most are extraordinary. "The Snail Watcher" is her most well-known story, and it is truly bizarre, but the best stories are more quietly unsettling, such as "Another Bridge to Cross" (which has an almost Hemingway feel to the writing), "When the Fleet Was In at Mobile," "The Herione," "Mrs Afton, among Thy Green Braes."My two favorite stories are "Cries of Love," and "The Empty Birdhouse."I've read a couple of critics and several readers who have suggested she was not as good a writer of stories as novels, b
Starting in 2011, Grove Press will begin to reissue nine of Highsmith’s works. This is a captivating, important collection from one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century” (Otto Penzler).. Here naturalists meet gruesome ends and unhinged heroes disturb our sympathies. A critically acclaimed best seller in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Eleven is Highsmith’s first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability. The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psycholog
Frankes, The New York Times Book ReviewHighsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. 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 GreeneHighsmith’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 toadsuccess is nearly always fatal. In her short stories Highsmith naturally has to adopt a different method. What is striking about these stories is their integrity: