Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires

The Life of Patricia Highsmith

De: Richard Bradford

Narrado por: Daniel Henning

Made famous by the great success of her psychological thrillers, Patricia Highsmith is lauded as one of the most influential and celebrated modern writers. However, there has never been a clear picture of the woman behind the books.

The relationship between Highsmith's lesbianism, her fraught personality - by parts self-destructive and malicious - and her fiction has been largely avoided by biographers. She was openly homosexual and wrote the seminal lesbian love story, Carol. In modern times, she would be venerated as a radical exponent of the LGBT community. However, her status as an LGBT icon is undermined by the fact that she was excessively cruel and exploitative of her friends and lovers.

In this new biography, Richard Bradford brings his sharp, incisive style to one of the great and most controversial writers of the 20th century. He considers Highsmith's best sellers in the context of her troubled personal life: her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and abundant self-loathing.

©2021 Richard Bradford (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Nothing new

This is the third biography of Highsmith and it doesn’t present anything new. I’d recommend anyone that is interested to read/listen to Andrew Wilson’s version.

Loathsome

I used to enjoy Highsmith’s work and have read much of it. But this biography, an unremittingly loathsome tale of pathology in gruesome detail, has totally finished her for me forever. Not that I don’t know how to separate the creator from the creation. The author obviously hates his subject and shows no insight or compassion for her. Probably a female narrator would have been able to soften the presentation, but this narrator just enforces Highsmith’s hatred for men. I would give this book four stars in the titles to avoid list, if there were one.