BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
‘Forbidden desires, strange obsessions and a singular talent for suspense’ GUARDIAN
‘What is striking about these stories is their integrity . . . a brilliant collection’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Fabulous, in all senses of that word’ PAUL THEROUX
From the eerily outlandish to the dark and brutal, Eleven presents a gallery of bizarre characters, each driven by strange unspoken urges, whose cumulative effect is at least as unsettling as any of Highsmith’s previous novels. Unsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection of short stories. A man becomes devoted to his pet snails, with fatal results.
A young nanny turns arsonist in a bid to become heroine of the hour. A boy finally stands up to his mother, with knife in hand. Highsmith weaves a world claustrophobic in its intensity, disturbing in its mundanity, as she probes the dark corners of the human psyche.
Eleven is a collection of masterpieces of Highsmith’s particular art, full of compulsion, foreboding and cruel pleasures.
‘Forbidden desires, strange obsessions and a singular talent for suspense’ GUARDIAN
‘What is striking about these stories is their integrity . . . a brilliant collection’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Fabulous, in all senses of that word’ PAUL THEROUX
From the eerily outlandish to the dark and brutal, Eleven presents a gallery of bizarre characters, each driven by strange unspoken urges, whose cumulative effect is at least as unsettling as any of Highsmith’s previous novels. Unsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection of short stories. A man becomes devoted to his pet snails, with fatal results.
A young nanny turns arsonist in a bid to become heroine of the hour. A boy finally stands up to his mother, with knife in hand. Highsmith weaves a world claustrophobic in its intensity, disturbing in its mundanity, as she probes the dark corners of the human psyche.
Eleven is a collection of masterpieces of Highsmith’s particular art, full of compulsion, foreboding and cruel pleasures.
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Reviews
What is striking about these stories is their integrity: they are all of a piece . . . a brilliant collection
Fabulous, in all senses of that word
This is a captivating, important collection from one of the truly brilliant short-story writers of the twentieth century
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
She's sui generis, a writer of almost occult power
Forbidden desires, strange obsessions and a singular talent for suspense
The mood of nagging apprehension is consistent, skilfully underplayed so that just the right amount of chill is induced with an economy of means
