Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith

In this provocative account, Bradford (Orwell: A Man Of Our Time), an English professor at Ulster University, shows the symmetries between the life and art of Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995). The author uses diaries, interviews, and previous biographies to support his premise that Highsmith’s novels exemplify how “fact filters into fiction.” Bradford asserts that the staples of Highsmith’s fiction—“deranged, murderous individuals” and double identities—are derived from Highsmith’s childhood, marked by strife, potential abuse, and her a contentious relationship with her mother. He details how all-consuming (and often overlapping) lesbian affairs in Highsmith’s adulthood invoked “love, envy, and fantasy” and perpetuated the “Grand Guignol homoeroticism” of her best-known work including Strangers on a Train (1950), The Price of Salt (1952), and the career-defining The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955). Bradford’s psychosexual interpretations of Highsmith’s “sadomasochistic catastrophes,” however, sometimes strain credulity, as when he writes that “we have to take seriously” that Highsmith’s affair with civil servant Ellen Blumenthal led to Highsmith’s “casual,” self-proclaimed anti-Semitism becoming “visceral.” Still, fans of Highsmith’s work are sure to gain a deeper appreciation for the exceptional writer and her complicated life. (Jan.)