Small g (30 page)

Authors: Patricia Highsmith

BOOK: Small g

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A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. She was educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek. Her first novel,
Strangers on a Train
, published initially in 1950, proved to be a major commercial success, and was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite this early recognition, Highsmith was unappreciated in the United States for the entire length of her career.

Writing under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan, she then published
The Price of Salt
in 1952, which had been turned down by her previous American publisher because of its frank exploration of homosexual themes. Her most popular literary creation was Tom Ripley, the dapper sociopath who first debuted in her 1955 novel,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
. She followed with four other Ripley novels. Posthumously made into a major motion picture,
The Talented Mr. Ripley
has helped bring about a renewed appreciation of Highsmith’s work in the United States, as has the posthumous publication of
The Selected Stories
and
Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories
, both of which received widespread acclaim when they were published by W. W. Norton & Company.

The author of more than twenty books, Highsmith has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland on February 4, 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.

More praise for Patricia Highsmith and
Small g

“[Highsmith’s] characters astonish themselves, and us, by discovering love in the very last places they ever expected to find it.”

—Francine Prose,
O Magazine

“Its superabundance of characters is only one of the elements that give ‘Small g’ its air of Shakespearean complexity.”

—David Leavitt,
New York Times Book Review

“
Small g
is a welcome addition to Highsmith’s published novels, offering readers an insight into a fascinating aspect of Swiss society and an opportunity to explore Highsmith’s final concerns and obsessions.”

—Louise Welsh, author of
The Cutting Room
,
in the
Washington Post Book World

“For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there’s no one like Patricia Highsmith.”

—
Time

“[Highsmith] has an uncanny feeling for the rhythms of terror.”

—
Times Literary Supplement
(London)

“An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith, and there’s nothing quite like it.”

—
Boston Globe

“Patricia Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.”

—
The New Yorker

“Patricia Highsmith is often called a mystery or crime writer, which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman.”

—
Cleveland Plain Dealer

“One of our greatest modernist writers.”

—Gore Vidal

“[Highsmith is] a writer who has created a world of her own—a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger. . . . Patricia Highsmith is the poet of apprehension.”

—Graham Greene, from his foreword to
The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

“As in many of her other works, Ms. Highsmith here seems to relish the abnormal.”

—Judy Alter,
Dallas Morning News

“A powerful and mesmerizing read; highly recommended for public and academic libraries.”

—Lisa Nussbaum,
Library Journal

“Highsmith’s last book . . . offer[s] an intriguing exploration of gay culture and the complexities of love, jealousy, possessiveness and friendship.”

—Misha Stone,
Booklist

“The best thing about
Small g
is the affectionate homage it pays to relationships that are not exclusive or possessive, that may or may not be sexual, but which have the power to create happiness or break a stranglehold that is choking off a full, delicious life.”

—
Lambda Book Report

“All those qualities that have made Highsmith such an important figure—her carefully crafted prose, her understanding of human frailties and the randomness of life—are present in this final work.”

—Aaron Stander,
I Love a Mystery

First American edition 2004

First published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury 1995

First printed as a Norton paperback 2005

For information about permission to reproduce selections from

this book,write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, NY 10110

Production manager: Amanda Morrison

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Highsmith, Patricia, 1921–

Small g : a summer idyll / by Patricia Highsmith.—1st American ed.

p. cm.