How can you resist a biography that begins, "She wasn't nice. She was rarely polite."? Schenkar's book is not hagiography by any means, but it is one of the most incisive, gripping biographies you will read. She makes clear her dislike of her subject again and again: Highsmith was racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and just downright unpleasant whenever she could get away with it. She brought a lover to the brink of suicide then walked away with utter callousness. She was the type of person no one should want to call a friend, yet many did, to the author's bewilderment. Despite this, Schenkar is not stinting in praise for Highsmith's work, which includes some of the most arresting and warped psychological portraits in twentieth century literature. Her perceptive take on Highsmith's art brilliantly reveals the parallels running through her subject's life and work until at last you understand Schenkar's intent is not to destroy Highsmith's reputation (she did that more than capably on her own), but to make sense of the extraordinary pull her writing has on so many when placed beside her pathetically-blunted humanity. Pernicious and nosey as it sounds the attraction of a writer's private life and potential revelations about the same, will induce me to, and others, I'm sure too, 'stretch the binding' on what is often mere titillation.The writer flits through the decades of Ms. Highsmith's life with a total disregard for chronology. Some will have no problem with this, for me, it was irritatingly unconventional.There is an immense amount of research on display and the reader is given a microscopic view of Patricia Highsmith's innermost workings through access to her "cahiers". However, these mostly record the series of romantic 'béguines', that seemed to possess Ms. Highsmith throughout her life.What was most unsatisfactory was the author's disinclination to put Highsmith's writing under a critical review. We are left with an excellent journal of Patricia Highsmith's life, but little sense of the value of her work. Highsmith recorded her private life extensively which exposes the "Secret Life"of the title to be mere hyperbol.
What do You think about A Talentosa Highsmith (2012)?
too disjointed and actually not informative about her writing.
—najouael
Far reaching, well written biography of a very unlikable woman
—haneul0630
