Eleven (urspr publ 1970; utgåvan 1970)

Entertaining, odd stories, a couple of which are agreeably unsettling. Plus, killer snails. ( )

This is a remarkable collection of short stories, written at various times between 1945 and 1970. As always with Highsmith, we know from the first page of each that there is something badly wrong with the world we are in. If we had any sense, we would stop reading there and then, but we don't, we're drawn in, and we soon find that it's worse than we thought. Highsmith was a writer who could exploit the possibilities of short and long forms equally well: in these stories she takes full advantage of technical possibilities like calculated departures from strict realism ("The quest for blank Claveringi", "The empty birdhouse"), or plot elements left entirely unexplained ("Mrs Afton, among thy green braes", "The Heroine").

Graham Greene's introduction to this collection compares Highsmith to Saki, and there is definitely something in that: both tend to use animals as a metaphor for the dark, irrational side of life, and in both cases it has a tendency to triumph over civilised, rational human efforts. Maybe Saki never thought of using invertebrates, but Highsmith makes up for that here by having not one, but two stories in which humans are overpowered by snails. Even when the animals are killed, they seem to triumph ("The Terrapin", "The empty birdhouse").

Definitely recommended: but you might not want to read it just before going to bed! ( )

Wonderfully misanthropic tales of the marginalized and emotionally unstable. The protagonists are uniformly in a state of despair from which there is no escape. As unpleasant entities enveloped in perpetual loneliness, their misery is inevitable. Devoid of any recognizable sympathy, this is a good book to reinforce your worst feelings about your fellow human beings. Includes a foreword by Graham Greene. 2/04

Note to self: Curiously, these stories are not included in the anthology The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

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I think I may like Highsmith's short stories better than her novels, but I guess I haven't read enough of her fiction to make a proper judgment. This collection was quite good though, and I believe it was also her first. I often find myself wondering what mental processes led to the plots of some of her stories, but less so in this collection than in "Tales of Misogyny" or "The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder."

Surprisingly, two of the stories are about the protagonists eventually fighting for their lives against snails, which isn't a topic I would expect to run across anywhere once, let alone twice. Not all the stories in this volume are as outrageous as the other two collections I mentioned earlier though, and most of the stories are downright normal, if more than a little dark. One of the more disturbing stories is about a little boy who is psychologically abused by his deranged mother, who eventually cooks a turtle he took a liking to. That one will probably stay with me awhile. One of the other stories was about two old women who constantly tortured one another by destroying each other's favorite possessions, which I didn't quite understand until I reread the title, "Cries of Love" or something like that. Another excellent story fell at the end of the volume about a woman and her husband being annoyed by what is possibly an imaginary creature. I think I disliked the overall message of that story, but the surreal way it unfolds and ends was quite good.

I enjoyed all the stories in the volume quite a bit, and I would have an easier time recommending this as a bizarre collection of short stories over the other two, which fit my tastes perfectly, but are perhaps a bit too deranged or weird for a lot of other people. ( )