Product Description

Patricia Highsmith - author of "Stranger on a Train" and "The Talented Mr Ripley" - had more than her fair share of secrets. During her life, she felt uncomfortable about discussing the source of her fiction and refused to answer questions about her private life. Yet after her death in February 1995, Highsmith left behind a vast archive of personal documents - diaries, notebooks and letters - which detail the links between her life and her work. Drawing on these intimate papers, together with material gleaned from her closest 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114968 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Review
'A fascinating, beautifully balanced and meticulously researched biography, bringing us as close to understanding Highsmith as we are ever likely to get' Sunday Telegraph 'Wilson has delved with extraordinary diligence, and everything he has unearthed is remarkable' Mail on Sunday 'Excellent and outstandingly readable Brilliant and compelling' Daily Mail 'An exemplary biography of a tortured, difficult and outstandingly gifted human being' Sunday Times

Daily Mail
‘Excellent and outstandingly readable … Brilliant and compelling’

Sunday Times
‘An exemplary biography … Wilson has fashioned a biography that does complete justice to her uneasy spirit’

Customer Reviews

stuart pe-win
I am not a big fan of literary biographies but I found this to be very readable and insightful. A "must by" for fans of her work.

Weird, Unkind, and Dissolute
"She was a weird, unkind, dissolute person." This is how her goddaughter remembers Patricia Highsmith, and after reading Andrew Wilson's biography, I think so, too. But there were all those great books and stories. . .

In Beautiful Shadow (a reference to the name of Ripley's home in France, Belle Ombre), Wilson describes quite a lot of Highsmith's writing, so by the end of the book, you may have a long list of novels and stories to look for. He examines her influences, her relationships (romantic and otherwise), and her many quirks.

Highsmith was never very popular in the U.S., at least until the recent movie The Talented Mister Ripley, came out after her death. She was more successful in Europe, where fans even recognized her in the street. Perhaps this explains why she lived most of her adult life in Europe. She was never very comfortable anywhere, even in her own body, according to those who knew her, but she seemed less uncomfortable in Europe.

What sort of a mind comes up with the sort of strange, compelling stories that Highsmith did, with their amoral and still often sympathetic characters? Wilson goes a long way toward answering that question in this biography, but some questions remain unanswered, and maybe it's better that way.

At Last!
As a long-time fan of Patricia Highsmith, who I have been reading since I was a teenager, I was looking forward to reading this book to find out about the author, of whom I knew very little other than the basic details of her life.

I wasn't disappointed. Beautiful Shadow interweaves the life of Highsmith and her books almost as one, and demonstrates how the two are so closely interlinked.

It's hard to believe from her books that Highsmith was most contended of individuals, and this proves to be the case.

Her story, which Wilson (although he never met her) has put together with the help of her journals and interviews with friends and contacts, is a masterful account of a tragic and tortured individual, who led a lonely life interrupted really only by the joy she gained from writing and painting.