Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The whole book is excellent. Highsmith is pointed and dry about herself and everything else. But the early chapters are special. They comprise one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts I’ve read — and it’s a crowded field! — about being young and alive in New York City." -- Dwight Garner - New York Times
"The boldest of von Planta’s editorial decisions has been to bring the diary and cahier entries together, “interwoven and interlocked”.... It works well.... Patricia Highsmith’s lacerating diaries and notebooks... will be seen as one of the great twentieth-century artistic self-portraits." -- Frances Wilson - New York Review of Books
"Provides stunning access to the mind of a notoriously secretive author." -- Keziah Weir - Vanity Fair
"The
Diaries... record [Highsmith's] exultation upon realizing the kind of murder-minded writer that she is.... Exemplary.... [Highsmith's] great contribution to the mystery genre turns out to be nothing else than her diaries and journals." -- Benjamin Kunkel - The New Republic
"To immerse yourself in [Highsmith's] private sphere, which she willingly discloses (she knew her writing would be read and published one day) is breath-taking." -- Alexandra Schwartzbrod - Libération
"Now, in the year of her 100th birthday – Patricia Highsmith was born on January 19, 1921 – a 1,000 page volume of her intimate diaries and notebooks (1941-1995) is being released, which allows a close-up look of this astonishing destiny: ruled by the passion to write, crowned by success and ground down by disastrous love affairs." -- Josyane Savigneau - Les Echos Week-End
"Highsmith’s company, while reading these diaries, is fascinating. It means slipping from the joyous effervescence of a youth spent in
Mad Men Manhattan (smoky bars, cocktails, nightly encounters and hidden loves) to misanthropy and disillusion in Switzerland." -- Nelly Kaprièlian - Les Inrockuptibles
"In these diaries and notebooks, one gets to know unknown sides to the crime writer: the lyrical, ecstatic and aphoristic." -- Tobias Gohlis - Die Zeit
"Reading Patricia Highsmith's diary entries filled me with a joy that goes beyond the thrill of such a literary treasure being published for the first time after almost thirty years." -- Anuschka Roshani - Das Magazin zum Tages-Anzeiger
"Offer[s] intimate insights into a writer’s soul – and into [Highsmith's] attempt to write a lesbian novel, which she published under a pseudonym in 1952." -- Welt am Sonntag
"Her writing owes everything to this attitude: of confronting the world armed with a steel needle." -- Claudia Voigt - Spiegel
"The Highsmith community has been eagerly awaiting this moment:
The Diaries and Notebooks are finally being published." -- Linda Stift - Die Presse
"A fascinating document of cultural history." -- Maike Albath - Deutschlandfunk Kultur
"[
Her Diaries and Notebooks] testify to the recalcitrant, unrelenting spirit of this great American curmudgeon and gifted crime writer." -- Focus
"More than 50 years of the novelist’s diaries and notebooks have been assembled in this volume, painstakingly annotated for context by Highsmith’s longtime editor Von Planta . . . An exceptional effort . . . Sure to be a resource for future scholars . . . offering a frank and detailed account of a woman and writer coming of age." -- Asa Drake, Library Journal, starred review
"A quarter century after the death of novelist Highsmith (1921–1995), fans are given a fascinating and unprecedented look into the ‘playground for [her] imagination’ . . . Devotees and historians alike will linger over every morsel." -- Publishers Weekly
"Disclosures from a meticulously documented life. . . An admirably edited volume for scholars and voracious fans." -- Kirkus Reviews
