'Excellent and outstandingly readable .. Brilliant and compelling' Daily Mail
Patricia Highsmith, the celebrated author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, was renowned as a suspense writer during her life time, yet she was notoriously evasine about the sources of her fiction and refused to discuss her private life. After her death in February 1995, a vast archive of Highsmith's diaries, notebooks and letters was found. Extraordinary in their candor, they detail the links between her life and her work. Drawing on these intimate papers, together with materials gleaned from her closet friends and lovers, Andrew Wilson has written the first biography of an author described by Graham Greene as the 'poet of apprehension. Wilson illuminates the dark corners of Highsmith's life, casts light on mysteries of the creative process and reveals the secrets that the writer chose to keep hidden until after her death.
1. The forever seeking 1921 and before
2. Born under a sickly star 1921-1927
3. A house divided 1927-1933
4. Suppressions 1933-1938
5. The taste of freedom 1938-1940
6. A trail of unmade beds 1940-1942
7. The dungeon of thy self 1942-1943
8. A carefully nurtured bohemianism 1943-1945
9. The strange, subtle plucking of terror 1945-1948
10. How I adore my Virginias 1945-1948
,etc.